The Real Reason Industry Giants Win at Affiliate Marketing

Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Digital Marketing Stories. I'm absolutely delighted today to have, Stas, who's coming to us from, Andorra. He's actually from Ukraine originally, but he's now living in Andorra. And uh, the company that he's working for is called Lead.

Is it Leader Private? Yeah, but it, it, it is correct. It's leader private, it's fantastic to, meet you. Uh, tell us a little bit about how you got into the, the industry.

yeah, it's, it's been a while. So, I've started 10 years ago, started as a affiliate individual, so I started media bias, on different niches. my main core is legion. and, last five years, it's, mostly social, networks like TikTok and Facebook.

we work with, With the insurance industry now, it's, health insurance, car insurance on us, mortgage insurance, and, all this, all this stuff, also we work with the mainstream dating niche. so we do ligen for, this services. So 10 years, ago I started my, my way, in this business in affiliate marketing. And after four years, I decided to, to open my company and, to create a team.

So I started to hire people. and at this moment we have 20 people, in house team, and, I don't know, say, to say about outsource, but, we have a lot of also outsource, partners now as well. So 20 people in house at this moment. That's great.

I mean, like, I, I always kind of say there's, there's a couple of things you can't fake and one of the things you can't fake is you can't fake longevity. So 10 years is a good length of time to be in the industry and it's, it's funny, I, I've spoken to a lot of. previous guests and they have a sort of ty typical journey that they've taken. They start off working for themselves, like doing pri primarily affiliate related stuff.

and then they start to evolve and, and become, I mean, I call it, they, they call it legitimate businesses, right? But I don't really think being an affiliate was ever, to me it was never an illegitimate business. I mean, I did a lot of affiliate marketing back in the day and, and again, for me, having an agency was an, a natural evolution to go from kind of. Running affiliate business to, to basically sort of setting up an agency.

And part of the reason that I set up my agency was I wanted to eventually get to the point where I could sell it. Right. And I did, didn't think that anyone would've bought an, an affiliate business, so I decided to kind of set up an agency. And like when you look at it now, I think there are so many people that have actually gone out and, and done incredibly well selling affiliate related businesses.

Yeah. Yeah, it's true. So, affiliate business, it's, nowadays it's, it's a big system, that you. Should support, you should hire people, you should use, different because.

And, you just run, you, you perform and you make profit and, big deal. And, to work with the people, it's, much more complicated, this moment and, and always was. So you should know processes and structure. Yeah.

So one of the, one of the challenges I always found, and, and I, I do a lot of consulting now where I talk to people who are getting into affiliate marketing for the first time. And one of the challenges is always how you decide which offers you're going to run, right? 'cause there's so many people that may are offering the same a. Type of offers and how do you decide which one is the best one for you to run?

How did you, how did you kinda go through that process of deciding which, pub, which advertisers you wanted to specifically work with? Or if you were doing things through a, a network, which, how, how did you decide which networks you wanted to work with? Thank you for your question. yeah, I have a, a good response for this question.

so, As I've been known, in the industry and, I'm, I've been working for 10 years. I visiting, most of the affiliate shows and, big, affiliate summits in us, in Europe, in Asia, so I know, big community. And, we are working only with the trustworthy, advertisers, only with the reference. so we don't work with the no name companies, before we, we.

We don't check, if they pay, in the terms, if they don't have any problems in the industry. We have different communities, different chats, so you can ask, people, do you know these guys? Are they trustworthy? And, after this we just start, signing contracts.

and, we are checking all the points of the contract and, The main, the main, it's a reference. Of course. If we know people who work with these advertisers and they don't have any problems, we start to do it. If we know that, some people had some issues.

So we are checking more details and, we, we cannot, we can even skip this advertiser and don't start to work because, it's a risky, we work with the big volumes and, I don't wanna risk my company, my team, and, my money of course. Cash. Yeah. yeah.

Yeah. 'cause I, again, I think, I think a lot of, advertisers and agencies assume that as. An affiliate that you are gonna be desperate to kind of like, take their offers. And, and as you say, like sometimes the, I, I always found, like for me, the, the, the, the experience was bitter, right?

I, I had had a couple of advertisers and agencies not pay me. Right. And, and for me it's like, it's always horrible because ultimately, as you say, like, I mean, I, I used to buy a lot of traffic on Google back in the day and, and if you, if you are, if you've. Kind of committed to spend the money.

You've spent the money, right? I mean, you spent, I, I could have spent 20, 30, $40,000 on advertising, and if the advertiser doesn't pay me, then I'm on the hook, right? I can't turn around to Google and say, Hey, you know what? Don't worry about it.

The advertiser didn't pay me, so I'm not gonna pay you, but I'm gonna carry on running all sorts of other offers. They just wouldn't do that, right? They would always insist on kind of you getting the money. They get their money.

And, so for that reason, I, I was, I'm a bit like you, I was quite particular about which advertisers I wanted to work with and which agencies, and I wouldn't do anything unless I could get some sort of validation that they were a, a legitimate business and that they paid their bills on time. So I. Well, one of the, most important point is, to know personally, some people from this company, if, if it's people with a good track, if they, it could be, could work, before, in different companies and you know them.

So you ask if it's a good company, you, you work. Yeah, of course. And, 99% of the responses. Yeah, of course it's a good company and, we can work.

So it's just, industry opinion. If you have it, you can start to work. if you, if you don't have, good feedbacks, it's, it's better to go to another advertisers and to build relationships there. So what do you think, what do you think as an, as an affiliate, what, what, what would you say are the most important things that you want to negotiate with your advertiser or your agency right, in order for you to kind of like do well with them moving forward?

yeah, of course. so, When, when you already onboarded, just start slowly to check how is the track, how is, account manager's responses and, how they pay. so, and after one, two months, You can scale. If you see that it's a good company, it's a big, it's, no problem, always in time.

So you can scale a lot and, just show the quality and, big volumes. And when you show, stable traffic, stable quality, everyone is, in a win-win position. And, everyone, would like to scale. We had such cases with a search arbitrage, before with IFD feeds.

I, I guess you know this industry as well. So we, we, we used to work with, Facebook and TikTok traffic to search feeds, and we started slowly with these guys. we just check in day-to-day feedbacks. how is, traffic, how is it performed?

Are you happy? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We are happy.

You can scale twice, three times. Okay. Let's do it. and, we, we did it in years, three years.

so, and no problem. Any Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs nothing. We, we, we also, we, we just, had a very good experience with, Google Feed. So same model.

You can work in different verticals. Just start slowly to check the partner if everything is good. So boost and, make money. That was the thing I was, I always found funny, like, a lot of people, I, I would, I worked with travel companies and so on, and they would always talk about like, you're a, you are, you're a travel company.

And I mean, ultimately I said, no, we are not, we are not a travel company. We are a click selling company. We were doing arbitrage. We were selling clicks to airlines and on online travel agents.

Right. And ultimately. All, all we were doing is just arbitrage. We were buying traffic for say, 20 cents on Google and selling it somewhere else for like a dollar.

Right. And, and ultimately we didn't Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs really care what happened as far as, the, the, the, the journey of the, the kind of, the original point of entry for, for us with the click at 20 cents, right. And the exit to, to the, To the airline or, or online travel agent for a dollar. Right?

We didn't care. I mean, initially we didn't care. Eventually it got to the point where we started to kind of go, well, maybe we are, we are leaving more money on the table. So we, we started to, to kind of do strategic partnerships with, with, a.

Airlines and travel agents where we actually got paid a result based upon the, the actual outcome of Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs the, the, the transaction, right? So if it was, somebody looking for a flight going from say, London to Barcelona, that might be, one, if it's one person that could be maybe a. an 80, a hundred Euro flight, right? Maybe not so, so much now, but certainly back in the day, then it would be that, that sort of money.

so for us, we, we would make very little money on that particular transaction, but if it was somebody that was, let's say they were going from London to New Zealand, right? And they were going in business class and they were taking their family, that could be a huge deal, right? So it could be, we could, Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs we could take a commission on the actual value of the. The transaction rather than on just the k, the kind of click that we were sending out to the airline.

Right. So it's al it's almost like a, I think sometimes you need to look at it from the point of view of how can I kind of manage my own risk? Right. I want to try and, and, and I think sometimes having a hybrid of some elements that are kind of, you get paid for, for each visitor, so pay per click, right?

Or whether you get paid on performance of CPA or, or rev share. I think that that can quite often work well also Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs . Yeah. Yeah.

It's a, it's a very good case and, on US market there's always, we work on CPA or real share and, so. The, the main goal is, to generate quality traffic and everyone is happy. So yeah, it's a, it's a good case. So, so, so the, the, the, the agency that you have now, did you transition completely away from affiliate or do you still sort of have some affiliate business and, and kind of agency business?

We have some kind of agency business, and affiliate business as well. So it's a two direction. Okay. I.

So affiliate business is still, is still busy, and you can work. And, of course we, we have a big experience, in different niches and, know a lot of people. So we, we continue affiliate business as well. So how, how important do you think it is to, 'cause you mentioned like earlier about going to the, the kind of conferences shows.

How important is it to kind of go and, and sort of actually physically be there in person with, with other people in the industry Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs ? I think it's one of the most impor important, stuff to, to go to the shows. Because you show to the people that you are in business, you, you don't hide. somewhere you are public.

and of course in a person, you can, arrange more details. You can, you can see your partner, you can, you can discuss, more points. And, you can, you can, you can make more deals. Even, so I Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs a hundred percent I advise to go to big shows, try to focus where, on what niche you work and, build, start building relationships, online and, continue to work with the people, in person.

the biggest, deals I have, I had after, after personal meeting. So it, it, it, it, it, it always work. It always work. I've always said to people that most of the best deals I've ever done have happened at two or three o'clock in the morning when we are in a bar somewhere, right?

We are blind, drunk, and, we agree that we're gonna do some work together. And those have been quite often the best relationships I've built with people, but also the best deals in terms of the, the, the kind of the money that I've made down the line after kind of cementing the, the, the deal over a couple of drinks. yeah, it's, it's happened from time to time. But, now, I can share as well that, different sport activities on the conference, for example, running, Paddle tournaments.

it's a good, good places for networking. So, of course, different ways you can speak. Just you, you should be not shy, communicative people, person and, To be open, to feedbacks, to communication Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs with the different people. so, and, just build relationships.

not, one time. It's for long term. so it's a main case, how to, to make profit if you will not go to the shows. success should be much, lower level, so.

Yeah, I, I also think I, I think a lot of people go to the show. So again, you, you mentioned like, affiliate events. I mean, like affiliate summit's been going on for forever. and I, I typically, I would, I, I don't go to both affiliate summits.

I just. The, the West Coast one now. So the one in Vegas, and for me it was always a case Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs of, I, I'm, I'm, I always was amazed at how many people I would meet and they would say, I'd say, what, what are you doing tonight? Which party you going to?

And they'd say, oh no, we're going to, we we're going to the, like a, a concert or we're going to, like we we're gonna go and do top golf or whatever it might be, but doing something that wasn't industry Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs related. Right. So they were doing, or they'd go gambling. And I'm thinking, well, this you, to me that's a missed opportunity.

Right? Because as you say, you have 6,000 people all in the same industry, all in one place at the same time. Right. And it's easy to kinda get around and, and I don't necessarily think you need to spend a huge amount of time walking the floor.

Right. But I think certainly. Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs if you hang around in the bars, in, in various kind of, hotels, you'll get a lot of opportunities to kind of meet people who are quite often decision makers within businesses, right? And they can kind of do things for you that you may not be able to ever do if you just try to reach out to them by email or phone, right?

So I think, having kind of that physical face-to-face contact is absolutely essential. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, also is good for community.

It's a side events and the shows, always, works well. And, I'm such person that, I'd like to to know, new people. I like, to communicate. So, I'm so happy always, to have one, two new contacts from the industry, from, the conference Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs this moment, usually is, because of the reference of, my partners, mostly.

Mostly it is easier way, but, yeah, I highly recommend, people who start an affiliate business, go to the different shows and to, to have communication with the, potential partners. A a hundred percent Me too. I, I, I can't recommend it enough. I mean, at the moment I think I'm sort of slowly getting back into the, the throes of going to shows.

'cause I went through a phase where, you know, because of the pandemic, I didn't go anywhere for any, any length of time. and I got used to not going to. To conferences and, and for me, again, it, it's sort of like Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs I'm, I'm in a different stage in, in life and my business now than maybe a lot of the, the kind of younger people starting out, right? So I have less hustle.

Like, and I don't, I don't feel I need to hustle as much as I used to. but, but that doesn't mean that I don't still get great enjoyment out of going to the shows and meeting up with like existing old friends that I've had in the industry for a long time. But also meeting and helping new people in the industry Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs . Yeah, yeah, sure.

many either. so I, I visit, last, less conferences, this year. but I have, must have conferences. It's Athletes Summit in New York, for example, this year in July, a w and Budapest.

So it's, this is, really the best show since the conference. so. I think it's, it is, it is really interesting. 'cause I, I remember at one point in time that, anyone that was in, involved in the industry that was based in North America, right?

More often than not, they wouldn't go to any of the shows outside of North America. Right. But you mentioned aw, in, in Budapest they do have, they have one in Bangkok. Right.

And you see so many people from America now go to those shows, right? They'll go to Budapest, they'll go to Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs Bangkok, right. there's one in Barcelona I think, I can't remember what that, when that is. But you know, they, they, they typically have lots of events and people will go to them right from the states because they realize that there is a massive opportunity to kind of.

Collaborate with, with publishers and partners who are based in, in Europe, who may not go to every single show that is in the States. Right? So it's their opportunity to kind of go and pick up, new relationships with people that they wouldn't otherwise have had. I Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs .

Yeah. Yeah. And, big companies, usually they have, booth, on the show, stands. So, People could, could come to the booth and to, to get acquainted with the different, guys with their account managers.

I had, maybe hundreds of such, meetings, when I started. and, I still, I know, I know these people and, we, we keep Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs relationships, so we still, in communication, these people already changed, three, five companies. But still we, we are, in communication and always say, ah, sta so what are you doing now? Maybe we can, so, it's a big community.

Yeah. So the. Yeah. Yeah, and it's, it is interesting, like a lot of the people that have been doing it for a long time, they've evolved.

Old and they're doing different things now. Right? So again, I think I, I've got lots of friends now who have been in the industry for, for, 20 plus years, and they're still as excited if not more excited because of the onset of things like ai. Pay per call.

Right. There's so many different things that have kind of come to the table recently. Right. That has really excited them to sort of stick around and, evolve some of their skillset.

But again, I think, I think a lot of the skills that, that, that they have, and that I have it, it involves building relationships with people face to face. Right. And those are not, you can't really sort Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs of use AI to kind of build a personal relationship. Like face-to-face, it just doesn't work that way.

Right? So, so for me, yes, you can use AI to kind of help eliminate some of the friction that you have in, in terms of the job that you're doing to enable you to free up more time to be able to do more of that face-to-face stuff, right? So I use AI a lot, right? To help run.

Sort of elements of my Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs business, right? That I could, yes, I could employ other, some, a, a person to kind of do that, but it's, I, I don't see the point in spending money on that. I'd much rather spend money on, on, hiring people that can go to shows and, and talk to people and build relationships, right? That way, knowing that the technology is there, kind of doing the things in the background that, that we need to kind of do in order to get the best performance.

So Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs . Even a good point to, to share experience, in which, where of your business, you are using ai. What kind of technologies was the companies in the top, It's better to have your own infrastructure or use sur party services. So it's a, AI is a strength now at Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs this moment.

And, we can see that, it's, it's deeply inside of, corporations and and small companies as well. So, even, Even people not from industries, they are using day to day. So we are, of course, we are using, as well, ai, it's So what sort of things are you using it for in your business? Yeah, so, we, we use, content generation ai.

We use, for analytical and statistical, stuff, for sometimes for optimizing campaigns, but at this moment it's just r and d. So we try to check how it works, and compare with manual. Work. Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs But, we involve, more and more, AI stuff in our day-to-day business.

So, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's progress the last couple years. And, even with the coding, you can, you can do just, simple tasks with, AI automatization, so. Yeah, I mean, I, I'm, I'm always blown away at that some of the use cases people are using in, in terms of actually, creating, creating skills that can enable 'em to kind of do, tasks. I, I, I would say like.

If you have a task that you do within your agency that you do more than like once, right? So the, the minute you start to do something for the second time, right, you should be turning that into a skill specifically for your agency to enable it to be done in a more efficient and effective way. Right? I, again, I've always kind of said that the, I think as long as you, you.

understand what the, the task that you are sort of, turning into a skill is right. And Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs how it should look. Right. Because I think sometimes people go into the, they kind of go into it blind and they just kind of take a skill, apply it and go, yeah, that's it, it's done.

It's great. Right? But if you don't actually know what the end result should look like, right? It's very difficult for you to kind of quality control the output to know whether you've got hallucinations in there.

Or whether it's, it's actually gonna get you into trouble, Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs right? I mean, so many people I've seen have lost Facebook accounts because they've run ai. They kind of end up with ads that are completely like false and Facebook ding them quickly and they end up losing their business manager and they go, what do I what? I didn't do anything wrong.

It's like, well, you did right. You trusted AI kind of blindly when you shouldn't have done so Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs . I even, Facebook, TikTok and, Google now have AI moderation a lot. They implement, these days.

A lot of this stuff. And, let's see, nearest future, how is the industry growing? So, So what, what would you say if, if you were gonna go right, I'm gonna try and do something different that no nobody else is doing at the moment. Where would you kind of, sort of recommend, publishers and, and affiliates look in terms of traffic types right, or traffic sources?

Are there any kind of like things that you're trying now that you haven't tried before that you are amazed with the, the results that you're getting Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs and now it's a good, Good for, affiliates now to pay attention to native ads, open web. so it's, like such, like, out brain Ola, MGID. So it's a good traffic source. it's, difficult to optimize.

It's, high budgets, tests. Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs But, still it's a very good, audience there because, People there, they're on the real websites. They are reading articles or different news, and, they are clicking, they are more focused, when they click because, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram for example, they Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs are just swiping and, they are, they're trying to find some wow effect.

And on this open web, traffic sources, people are more concentrated and, leads, in my opinion, sometimes on some verticals, leads are more, quality Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs than from social networks. So I highly recommend, still if you even tried before. Still try, rev content or Outbrain. It's a, that's a very good traffic sources for, all the Whitehead Niches.

Yeah, I mean, I've, I've run ads on sort of Taboola, Outbrain. I think I, I, I've also ran a, a little bit on, one called Ad Blade right back in the day, way back, like a long time ago. and. As, as you say, like I think sometimes, it's called native advertising for a reason because the ad copy, like it's, it's almost a case of you don't have to kind of create the ad yourself.

The ad gets built right, based upon the publisher's site to make it look like it belongs on there. Right. And I think sometimes that's where. I think people kind of fall down.

Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs They, they try and enforce, they got, they say, I've got this banner, I want it to go on this page. Right? And it just looks ugly. Whereas if it's a native ad, it'll have the same font, the same color scheme as the actual, publisher's website.

So it'll look, look as though it, it belongs there. Like it'll look native, hence the name. Right? So, and I think sometimes if you get the, the kind of the placement, right?

So if you have a specific offer that you're promoting and there's a publisher with. A specific, placement that you can kind of really dive into and get granular right. Then you can get huge in incredible results with it, right? But as you Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs say, like there's, there's a lot of traffic.

I think a lot of, a lot of the publishers on some of these native networks are poor, right? I say they're poor. They're, they're not necessarily poor for everyone, right? If you're doing.

Arbitrage, right? And you are paying very little money for the, the click, right? You could be making more on the backend, right? Because you could, again, you could be paying, say, five or 6 cents on the front end, right?

And getting 50, 60 cents on the backend, right? You don't really care kind of what happens on the front end because they, they're ultimately clicking through to your site and off your site, off to, to the, people that you are. Partnering with, right. So, so that, that can, Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs I found native can quite often be good for, for search arbitrage, right?

But equally it's good for some, like for, for people that are doing long form video sales letters, that type of thing. Right. so we, again, we've seen some success with, things like, hearing aids. So the, the ad copy looks really strange, right?

So it kind of drags people hook into, hooks them into the, the kind of the. The, the packaging of the title in the Descript, right? And when, then when they come to the site, there could be a video sales letter and and they could get great results from that. So Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs .

It's a. Is a good traffic source, for example, for home improvement as well. So, a lot of people, looking for good services in US, in uk, how to rebuild his house or how to repair some stuff. So it's a, it's a very good audience, but, you should remember that, It's about big budgets, really.

So if you are a new guy in affiliate marketing, Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs I highly recommend you maybe to start with, more simple teasers and with the lower budgets because, here's, it's a, it's a big companies in Native and they have, big publishers and, it's a, Really tons of the traffic and you should optimize and you should set up, and start, 2030 K, for first months at least. Yeah. 'cause check Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs to check how it works.

Yeah, I've always found that the, as you say, that there are some premium publishers that the, native networks have, right? Where the cost typically is much, much higher than it would be for the, the run of the mill kind of publishers that, that they have on the network, right? But ultimately, that's where you get the quality. That's where you get the good results from, right?

So you need to be competitive with your budgets, right? Both in terms of what you're prepared to spend for each visitor, but also how much you're prepared to spend. On a monthly basis, right? So as you say, if you, if you, if you've got a thousand dollars a day right, and you're prepared to pay for, for placements on, MSN or something like that, then you can get good results, right?

But, but I think a lot of people think that they can kind of get traffic for, $20 and a $20 a day and, play 20 cents a click or something like that. And, the opportunity's there. The publishers that they have at that lower level are much, much less quality. And and I think, that that's going to ultimately lead to, to people having a difficulty in hitting the performance that they want to get in terms of the, the roas Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs .

Yeah, even, even now, if you start, like individual affiliate affiliate. You should prepare a budget because, before, 10 years ago, we could start with a 10 20 K. It was enough, just a warmup and, to check how its, traffic perform. At this moment, it's, you, you need more money, to check, analytics and to optimize your campaigns.

so. Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs If you don't have enough budget, just go to work in the agency or affiliate team, and you also could make a really good numbers there. so I, I know that because, I pay to people. So it's a big opportunities and you don't need to, to make your own business.

Yeah, I've, I've seen a lot of people a good people, good, good team to join them and to improve them. And that's it. yeah. I've got, I've got a lot of friends that started life as affiliate manager and then realized how much money some of their publishers were making, and then they decided to kind of become a publisher.

Right? So, they, they understood how the business worked. They understand where the real money was being made, and Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs they realized that it wasn't as an affiliate manager, as a. An affiliate or publisher and, they could, they could make good money that way.

And, and, and I'm curious to know, like obviously you've, you've got your agency now that's grown to 20 people. how do you retain people in your agency to prevent them kind of doing that go going and kind of setting up on their own? I Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs I have, a very Democratic, how, how to say, I have democratic, management in my company. So, and also it's a great role, is hr, so I have hr, department that, supporting people, communication, and always I see, in what way people want to grow.

And, I give them this opportunity because I understood, before, What, what, what, what resources, you should have to develop and, understand Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs these people. A lot of people high motivated and, they want to grow up. You always, should discuss with your team, exact goals and, what is the motivation for them and, how much they want to earn this year or next year. So you, you can expect, the behavior of, your guys and, you can pay more attention here and, that's why, yeah, in average, I work with the people six, six, eight years That's good.

That's impressive. I, I've always found that the, the, the biggest challenge of having, people working in an agency is that, people I've, I've seen a lot of agency owners make the mistake of assuming that everyone that Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs works there is only interested in. Interested in money. Right?

And money is not the only thing that motivates people and want, wants them to kind of turn up at work, right? They want to be paid well for what they do, right? But sometimes it is the, the opportunity to kind of manage other people to have a proper career path Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs in terms of where they, where they're going, right? That they're involved in some of the decision making about, what sort of, offers they run and that type of thing.

Right? Rather than they're there just to kind of, there's your job, you just do your job and and shut up. Right. And, and I think, again, I think a lot of agency owners have made the mistake of assuming that Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs everyone is just there for money.

So, if they offer them a little bit more money, they'll be happy and they'll stay right. And some people have got fire, fire in their bellies. They want to kind of evolve and grow and, and do things kind of differently. Right.

And sometimes if you are an agency owner, you can help support that. Right. I've had lots of people that I've worked with in Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs the past where they have come to me with ideas, right. And I've gone, that's, that's a great idea.

Let's you know, how do you wanna do it? Right? And sometimes they would be, well, I wanna do it all on my own. I'm like, great.

Well, that's fine. I have no issue with that. Right. They've, they've been upfront and told me about it.

Right. But equally, sometimes they're worried about sort of Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs doing it because. They don't necessarily have the ability to kind of take some of the risks that maybe people like you and I would, would be able to do because of our longevity of doing what we do, right? So they need support and help to, to kind of do that, right?

So it could be, I can give them some of my time, or I can give them some of my Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs money to help support. Them grow the initiative. Right. And I could take sort of a bit like a, a dragon's den type scenario.

I could take a, an equity stake in their business Right. In return for some of my expertise. Right. And I think, the more people will share about it, I think it, it would be, you're very naive if you're an Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs agency owner and you assume that people aren't gonna be wanting to do some stuff of their own.

Right. So it's a case of. Have a have an environment where they can talk about it openly and freely, but you don't want it to be that they're doing all of their own work and none of your work, right? Because that's going to be detrimental to your business.

I. it's, also good stuff. Yeah. Completely agree with you.

And, you are also, full of energy, always. so, and, charismatic leader, because, only only such people, work with the people for a long time. And, I agree with you that you could support, new ideas of your, team and, give them opportunity just to check, maybe to test Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs this hypothesis. And, you'll close, the, and that's it.

And, you work together and you are on the same way. So it's, it's important. It's important because we, we work of course, for good money, for salaries, for, bonuses, but also we should do something big, together. And Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs they, always, they, my people, I, I guess that my people, always, feel that.

I am, I'm with them, near day to day. So I work with them and I understand this business as well. Like, I'm a practical affiliate, so I, I don't just, COO. of the corporations that, comes to, to the team to manage Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs them.

And I don't understand. No, I understand, the specific of this, activity. I know how is, technology work. I know how to analyze, how to optimize and they have feeling that Yeah.

Our, our boss with, expertise. So let, let's, let's keep working together and, let's do good numbers. Yeah, that you're absolutely right. I think, you lead by example, right?

So you, you need to be able to, to, I'm not saying that you, that has to be the only thing you do, but at the same time is, you need to be able to kind of step up and show. That you still have the skills and capabilities, right? I mean, if you, again, if you look at anyone that's run ads on Facebook in the last, well, I mean, I started Facebook Ads in 2009, I think it was. Right.

So that's like what, 17 years? Right. And, and in that time, I mean, the only thing that I've been guaranteed is one, that it would be. Like broken all the time.

It would be changing all the time. Right. Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs But, but there's been an evolution of how things have worked. Right.

And, and for me, I've always been testing different theories, different sort of strategies, right. Different ideas. Right. I want to try and push the boundaries as far as I can, right.

So that then as the team, when, when I kind of go to them and say, Hey, I want us to try this. I'm not Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs doing it just based on what I think is gut feel. It's something that quite often I've implemented. Across the board for some of the clients that I work with.

Right. So, so I know that when they're gonna do it with the clients that they work with, that it's, it's a kind of tried and tested model rather than just kind of like a, a guess of what might work. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

And I enjoy it. I mean, that's, for me, that's one of the most exciting parts of the job that I do, is that I get to kind of manage campaigns and ads on a day-to-day basis. Right. I, I'm still very kind of active and proactive in, in doing it right.

And, and I manage people less, right. And manage campaigns more, which I enjoy. So Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs . For me as well, it's like a lifestyle.

It's not a challenge for me. I also used to work with some campaigns. I'm marketer, of course I'm owner of the company. And, but still for me it's very interesting industry and, Hmm.

I believe in this industry, it's dynamic and, you should, keep, keep strength, every day, every month. Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs and, only, only, all this, stuff that gives me an energy, to continue this business. And, it makes my business profitable. So, and, my guys are following me and, we work and, I also, I appreciate the work with my team and I want to say them.

Hi. So, sta this has been, this has been a phenomenal conversation. I've loved having you on as a guest. If there's anything that you would like to kind of share with my audience, what, what, what sort of one tip would you maybe give them as a kind of parting gesture in terms of, what they might wanna do, either working with you?

it's like if you're looking for, publishers to kind of work with or advertisers to work with, maybe this would be a good opportunity if you kind of put something out there now to, to talk to 'em about that Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs no, just guys, I can, recommend you, don't afraid and, keep going. And, you, you can understand that it's a risky but personal message. Personal meetings, it's, the one of the most important stuff. And if you want to work, and organize your own business, it's about structure.

It's about, system. It's, About, the right people, on your board. so if Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs you are affiliate individual, just check, detail your partners, advertisers, publishers, do not lose your money and, scale gradually. And, this is maybe the main recommendation.

Be careful, be careful with the money, with, with the budgets, because you can burn in one moment. So. And, and there are plenty of com communities that kind of exist on Telegram and Slack and, various kind of other places. and I'll include some of those in the show notes in terms of where you can kind of go to, to kind of collaborate with other people who are in the affiliate space.

Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs because, for me, I, again, I think it, it you are only as good as the strength of your network, right? And I think the stronger your network, the stronger your. presence in the industry is going to be. So sta thanks.

Thanks again so much for being a great guest on the show and, I look forward to talking to, everyone else on the next episode of the Digital Digital Marketing Stories Weekly Report - w_c 12th April 2026 - Meta Ads - Barron Designs . Thank you Jim. Thank you, Jim. I was appreciate to take part in your podcast.

hope I see you again in a while, so until we can discuss. Us more and more points and more changes in the industry. So thank you. I think for, for me, it's, it's, it's such a dynamic industry.

I've enjoyed being part of it and I hope to continue to be part of it moving forward. So thanks again. Thanks. Thank you very much.