The Business of Affiliate Growth with Oleksandr Kulyk from Makeberry Affiliates

Speaker A: Foreign. You're listening to Revenue Optimization brought to you by Nuviz Statstrone and our friends at Afilka, which are producing some of the best affiliate program software you can get your hands on. And our friends at Otis igaming where if you want to rank anything, you got to talk to those guys. We are chatting with Oleksandr Kulik, who's VP of makeberry Affiliate and Biz Dev. So I want to ask uh, what makes affiliate successful in 2026? Uh, it's a hot topic to get started with.

Speaker B: Well if you're talking about the affiliates like in general, uh, so basically what makes them like good is cheap traffic and good quality of traffic. So if you can achieve like the cost of your traffic as low as possible and the quality as high as possible, you're going to be at the top. Because everyone wants to buy your traffic for the top prices. And as we can like see for the like maybe couple of years, the price of traffic like raises like a lot especially for the ppc. Uh, uh, so yeah, if you can manage how to get cheap traffic with a high quality, you'll be at top because there's lots of cheap traffic with a really bad quality and those kind of traffic not really much of products want to get. So yeah, if you want to be good affiliate, you have to get as best traffic as you can for the lowest price so you can get more profit.

Speaker A: But is that actually a big problem that affiliate programs face today is that you're being bombarded with this low quality traffic? Like is this constant?

Speaker B: Yes, especially because of like lots of things like influence AI, uh, garage games and stuff. So there's like lots of sources to get really cheap traffic with a poor quality. Like those are not really like the players though, just uh, like people, just the users whom built whom who was told to go to this link and into some stuff and yeah, so okay,

Speaker A: and let's focus on the opposite which is what have you seen in the last couple years of uh, the new affiliates like you said, like you know, traffic is for some people it's getting cheaper. I mean you want to be that person. But what are you seeing more of coming through, um, the signups, like are you seeing these new uh, uh, affiliates um, that are just basically using AI and they're becoming like nothing to something really quickly?

Speaker B: Well yeah, the one who uh, uh, who understood how to use AI to make that traffic, they were on top at the very first time. For example for the SEO, uh, lots of people or teams uh, started to use AI to build the website, to write the content and stuff like that.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: So uh, when you uh, was the very first of those who understood how to achieve more like how to make more websites, how to build them faster, uh, stronger, uh, more like that kind of website that Google and Bing and other companies are going to like and you got like really good pie of the whole, this good piece of pie. Uh but right now it's vice versa because lots of big teams also using an AI and they building uh, websites like I don't know, maybe thousands per day and that's kind of bad for the small teams. So you know it's like you are trying to fish, uh and big companies are using nets and you are just using the uh, the like the stick. So you still can like get a fish but it's much harder for you.

Speaker A: Yeah. But you must be seeing some of those affiliates break through where they are catching their own big fish.

Speaker B: Yep. Yep. Cause uh, big companies are mostly using like the old uh, strategies and they are not so um, they're not testing a lot. So if you're like a solo webmaster or like uh, a very small team you can invest more in testing. You can like think about something like out of box. In big companies they are stick to the box. They're uh, analyzing too much and they're not so like they're not so fast in uh, starting something you. Because they need to understand it. They need to test something that they need to talk about like with the like C level without their board. With their board and stuff like that and only then that they can start building it. And if you are just a small team you just ask for like a couple of hundred bucks, uh, or just a couple of bottles of beers and you just sell. I'm going to make this for the like whole night and I'm going to do something.

Speaker A: Yeah. Would you also say that there are some legacy affiliates that have been in the game for 10 years that you're seeing that they're struggling like they're losing their search traffic.

Speaker B: Y. Yes. Most of these affiliates are became uh like big companies and they're not about the traffic but about the brand awareness. So if the uh, casino, like if you are launching new casino, you want to work with those kind of affiliates just so everyone else could see you. So it's not about to get traffic from them but uh, like you want to other sees you. Yeah. So old affiliates are now more like you're using them as an uh, influencer just to vault to know you.

Speaker A: Yeah. So let's flip this around and say, you know, what are affiliates expecting from their operators and their affiliate programs today?

Speaker B: Well is usually they want uh, their traffic to convert as, as good as possible so, so they could earn um, more from the like the singles clicks and they want good retention because if you're working on the revenue share or hybrid you want to like uh, your players to play as much as possible and they won't uh, get paid like without any delays and stuff like that. Oh, sorry, we don't have money right now or we're going to pay you a bit later. So yeah, just good conversion rate, good retention and payments just like basic stuff. But unfortunately uh, again like last year there was like lots of scams and products. Um, casinos they were closed because of they were buying like very cheap traffic and they thought that they could figure it out how to manage to get the money back but they just were spending, spending, spending and then like they just collapsing.

Speaker A: Yeah, that kind of leads to one of my other questions which like what makes a good brand launch? So for example in Statstrone, um we're usually adding around 50 affiliate programs per month but we're closing around 30 and it's been like this for years. So our closed database is like this. It's just like a sea of like sunken ships everywhere. Um, um, so I think you guys have launched a new brand. So what goes behind it beyond just another brand?

Speaker B: Well the most important part I believe is the strategy and understanding of how you will work with this kind of traffic. So if you're buying for example uh, crash traffic, you have to understand that your particular product on this particular gear will uh, sort out how to earn more money than you spend for this traffic. And most of people like unfortunately when they're launching casino they just have some uh, amount of money and they're just hoping that they do know how to spend this money correctly. But as we can see they don't. Just some of them know or they just got lucky that from this like low quality traffic they got some, a few VIP users who just earning the money um, and they're just doing it. Yeah. So the main thing that you need before launching their product uh, before spending money is just understanding and you have to be sure that in this geo with this kind of traffic you will get like um, some you, you have a timeline of getting your investment, investment back and it's all depends of the money you have. For some, for some products that they want, uh, they invest it back like in two months. For some they can like spend for the whole year, whole year and only then they, they are uh, willing to earn something. So it's all about this, the strategy and understanding.

Speaker A: Yeah, you were mentioning that you know, affiliates want or kind of expect that you're going to deliver like a good roi, a good player value, uh, long players. Um, what are some of the things that affiliates can get from affiliate programs? I don't know if you guys ever do this where like is it possible that when you go into the affiliate backend, you've got your accounts, brands, campaigns, you've got postbacks, dynamic variables, maybe a player report. But is there ever like a report that you can share, like what games they play to kind of help you really?

Speaker B: Of course, yeah. It's like uh, unfortunately we cannot show it in the affiliate program interface because it's like lots of data and we just gonna like spend lots of money for the servers and stuff. But yes, you can always ask about the top payments methods, top games, top providers. Uh, maybe also you can ask if your players are uh, joining the tournaments and do they use the bonuses or what kind of bonuses they use. Like do they like free uh, spins or do they like uh, uh, extra money for the balance. So it's Anthony, you can ask and yeah, we can share it because uh, the more information have our affiliates, the better, the better quality traffic he can make or the more traffic he can provide us.

Speaker A: Yeah. Oh yeah, that's amazing. Um, with these reports, would they be kind of standardized? Like if you gave it to one affiliate, would the next affiliate have a similar report just with their own data?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, because we have our own uh, analytics where we can see all this stuff and we can just copy, paste or just share it with our.

Speaker A: So yeah, okay, that's amazing because um. Yeah, I mean this stuff is super valuable. It helps them know which pages to make sure that they focus on like if, if they've got, you know, if they're a slot site, you know, they, they really want to know which ones are driving the value.

Speaker B: Yeah. Or for example if uh, you have like a website with the slots and me as a product can tell you that most of the players from your sites playing not the regular slots but live games, you can add those live games to your website and uh, bring me more traffic and you can earn more. So yeah, just like basic things. But uh, yeah, you can make lots of profit for both, for both of us.

Speaker A: And just a small quick question, you said you have this as kind of like in house analytics and data. Is this kind of like using tools like tableau, power bi.

Speaker B: Yeah, it is Tableau and Jira.

Speaker A: Okay. Jira.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay, that's uh, that's a different one. Uh, you don't always hear Jira with affiliate programs, but it's good to know. Um, so what are the, the geo trends you're seeing? Um, like, you know, everyone talks about like, you know, I think Latin America has been on fire for quite some time. But where are you seeing uh, the markets kind of opening up like what's hot right now?

Speaker B: Well for now I heard more, hear more about the Africa and uh, I think that it will go soon to Asia and then back to Europe because you know it's like, it's like all cycling. It goes from Europe to Latin America. Now it's go to Africa, then it goes to Asia and it can come back to Europe. I think it will go like that. But I always have an answer for this question. So it's not about the hot markets, it's about the markets you can work with because uh, the rents are like going up and down and you don't have to go with this trends. You, you have to just understand with what kind of market or with what country you can work and just stick to it and that's all.

Speaker A: Okay, I got a challenging question but I feel like I'm asking one of the best people for it. What's the future of affiliate management? Like we're, we're in this AI era and 2026 is agents. Um, what does this look like?

Speaker B: Well, I think that we are going to use more uh, m. Automatization with the AI. Like uh, we will spend less time uh, like human hours for some job, for some work to do and we're going to use like bots AI to analyze, to talk to people, to uh, um, for example a uh few years ago if we will have some, if we have some issue with the payment methods or some games, we have to uh, wait to the uh, product team to tell us to the affiliate team and we as affiliates will tell to our affiliates. Right now we have like uh, alerts and those alerts we can just send directly to our affiliates so we don't have to go with this whole chain. And we have uh, bots who understand if I can say so, that bot and descent. In which chat is he right now? Is it like a uh, webmaster is like, like a team with a Facebook traffic, with SEO traffic, with PPPC traffic. And it all depends on the issue on either affiliate side or product side or somewhere else side he understand what he should uh tell in here just for team to stop traffic or to increase traffic or stuff like that. So we are like doing everything faster and I think that uh lately all our life became more faster because of the TikTok short videos and like uh crash games again like we starting to come in era with the fast life and at some point it's bad but in some point like if we are delivering some information faster it's better for us. So at some point it's like good but at some point we just live faster, uh watch faster and we get exhausted and tired faster or we expect

Speaker A: more because more is possible. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: That's pretty cool. Um, what else are you working on with AI and automation like either yourself or within the team. Because I mean what you just mentioned is this is really insightful. I don't know many programs that are actually doing stuff like this.

Speaker B: Yeah, so uh, mostly we were using AI with analytics like from the very first days when ChatGPT, uh, like when our company understood the ChatGPT could analyze the big uh bunch of data and tell us in short what was going on then clothes and like cloth. Right now I think it's one of the best tool you can use for like coding stuff. So we are making as I already mentioned bots for the affiliate team, for the analytics team, uh for the um in house buying team. Uh so it's all mostly with the analytics. Then uh also we started to do like an uh assistance uh for the buyer team for the affiliate team also. So affiliate uh manager don't have to check every single partner affiliate if he has started uh working with us like if we had a deal and if he started to like getting us delivering traffic or not if uh there is some clicks or not if he has a registration, if he has first deposit, if those are ah like deposit good or ah like only one timers and all these data are just sending to affiliate manager like in scope each day so he uh can analyze each of his partner like faster and he knows whom he had to write first, whom he had to ping and whom he has just to tell like well done, you have like a good quality of users and if it's possible just get us more.

Speaker A: Yeah now that's amazing. Uh do you get affiliates asking you guys for help?

Speaker B: Yeah, a lot because uh again they want to get insights from us. For example if some SEO affiliates uh will get information about our new brand they can already start to building and like building the websites with our um brand and they could get this uh, like branded draft. The very first one. So some of the insights we can share with our affiliates and some unfortunately not.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, I got a quick question because it's like I used to be an affiliate and I'd always get most affiliate managers. Like we had a website and it was all about casino bonuses, but we had like everyone else a top 10 list on the homepage and they would always ask for the number one spot. They wouldn't care about any of our other traffic channels. Um, our number one channel was newsletter. Our number two and number three were our free spins and no deposit page just happened to be what we had. Um, do you guys ever look at um, affiliate, uh, site holistically and say, hey, we, we think that there's more value in the long tail keywords in the blog posts. Um, I just feel like affiliate managers aren't asking for these things. What, what's your take?

Speaker B: Well, it's, it all depends on the affiliate. Cause sometimes they just don't need those kinds of uh, advices because they kind of like, hold on, I know what am I doing? I don't need your advices. I'm just doing this stuff and I know that it's going to work. And some of them, yeah, for, for those who's asking, we always get some insights and our point of view because I am personally, uh, in lots of chats with our partners and if I see some, something that they are missing, like either our affiliate manager or the affiliate personally, I can tell them that they can uh, make some, I know, like upgrades. Uh, those upgrades could get either more traffic or those traffic could be with a better quality. So it all depends on the other party if they're willing to accept your advices and if they're willing to talk to you, we always can share some data, some, I don't know, experience and stuff.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so we're talking about AI and how it's making you guys better and faster. But do you think that the relationship is never going to disappear? That's going to be, it's going to be one of the most important parts of any affiliate program always.

Speaker B: Because in our business you always want to know the person you're talking to. Especially uh, offline. Because in online it's going to be like behind my avatar could be like some M. Random guy and he could just tell you brother, just send me the traffic. I'm going to pay you, I'm going to pay you, just send me more. Then bump and he just disappearing. So yeah, I Think that in our business especially you want to know your partner uh in person and you always want to grab beer with them. Just uh, talk about life, about the future and stuff about some issues from the affiliate side, from the uh, product side and stuff like that.

Speaker A: No. Cool. Um, two more questions I've got uh, one of them is like I think um, I've gotten a friend who's an affiliate manager and he's telling me that most of the philacy contacts are like, they're coming at him with like hey if you want to get listed do you need a listing fee? You want to get placement, you got a flat fee. Um is this common and is this also a big problem where um, most of the deals that I've actually had to review personally where it's like I just go to ahrefs I'm like, I'm like bro, there's no traffic behind these sites or if there is traffic it's manipulated. It's not the market you think it is. Um, how bad is it?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, unfortunately this kind of issue is like for a really long time but lately yeah uh, we decided that we are not going to pay uh fixed uh fees for the ratings so we are going to start with the working the affiliate just on a regular basis. It's either CPA or hybrid or revenue revenue share after we can see at least some amount of traffic not from the top uh spots but later on maybe to 510 or top 10 or just some other random places. So if we can like feel this traffic can see how do they play, what games do they play, how much they depositing, uh how often they returning and only then we can talk about top one spots and even there we had a uh case uh we had a partner I believe we were in top five spots top five spot and we got like pretty decent amount of traffic. It was not bad quality and we decided to get more and asked him about Topan. Uh he said that we have to pay a fixed amount for Topan. We paid it and then um at some point I don't know its either was his um m manipulating with the Google with um some stuff uh from the top one position we got lots of one timers like players who just uh get the smallest deposit not playing, just doing nothing and just disappearing. So yeah sometimes top one is not giving you the best traffic or more traffic it's just giving you just like fake um fake fake uh users and you're gonna like be disappointing and yeah

Speaker A: you've given me an idea. So I wrote Down a note and I'll share with you after. Um, I wanted to ask uh, so that's one way to, to kill a deal. But what are some of the mistakes that kills deals when you're dealing with affiliates?

Speaker B: Mistakes? I don't know. Um, well yeah, we are all humans and we can all make mistakes. Like I think that most common mistakes is when affiliate manager is just uh telling you that you will have a no KPI or you will have like bigger rates but he hasn't approved it with his team lead or with the head of affiliates. And this is like the most common mistake M from this side and from the side of affiliate. I think that when we are paying for something and affiliate wanted or just telling us that he will make a post or just uh, make put us at top one like next day but some of his team may be like sick or forget or something like that and they're not giving us that top position or something could happen with him like I don't know. And those like couple of days when he's ignoring us and we already paid and those like it's not a m. It's. I couldn't say that it is a mistake but it's like maybe miscommunication, stuff like that. But those kind of stuff also like a deal breaker because I feel manager cannot trust you anymore because you already paid and you just started to ignore him. So. Yeah.

Speaker A: And I also think on the affiliate side it's uh, there are now tools that can automate some of this stuff. Like I've already built these where we don't run affiliate business anymore. But I built a couple affiliate sites just for the hell of it. And I'm like it's so easy for me to create like this full interview setup, give it to you as a link and you can add the pictures. You can do everything and all I need to do is approve. Yeah, um, it's never been easier.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's for sure. And then, and also we were talking about AI and we had mentioned that with AI everything became faster and all also hacking became faster because there's lots of website that been hacked or uh, even I believe some of the crypto casinos was. I couldn't tell that they were hacked but uh, AI was talking to the support uh, which was also AI agent and at some point that support gave like lots of money on the balance and the guy just uh, withdrawal it. And I believe it's like a big hole in this particular crypto casino that the support could add um, like real money. On the balance or this balance could be withdrawal. But anyway like with the AI and all this stuff everything became faster and easier not only for the good way but for the black way also.

Speaker A: I want to ask about helping affiliates be better with their security. Have you ever seen uh, situations where affiliates have other affiliate links that are on their site but they don't own them, like they've been hacked. How big of a problem is that today?

Speaker B: Uh, I haven't seen it uh so often lately. We've had a uh, few cases in the end of previous year when affiliate was hacked uh in several affiliate programs and they were trying to withdraw all his earning from uh, like some random wallets. Uh so from this side and if you're talking about the websites the most common thing is when the hackers hacking um widgets in Google Chrome and stuff.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And those widgets could um, like change the, how to say it's like the.

Speaker A: Is it changing the cookie?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So they changing the cookie or they, they changing the last link?

Speaker A: The users can go yeah, classic cookie stuffing. Yeah, that's a bad one. Yeah. All right, um, so we're probably going to see you at IGB London. Uh then there's ICE as well for the two main IG events. Um, what do you expect from these shows and um, like what is, what does your day look like? Like is it like non stop back to back meetings? How do you meet affiliates? What does it look like?

Speaker B: Well uh, since right, right right now I'm on the VB position so I'm not meeting so much affiliates. Uh I've got like uh just a few meetings I believe and mostly it's interviews and podcasts. So right now most of my conference is like I'm meeting through a few uh ah friends like an old affiliates a ah few new affiliates and the rest of the day I'm just giving the interviews, podcast and just talking to media. That is like the regular day but busy no doubt. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Um Alexander, uh, thank you for doing this. I want to pass it back to you to ask how can people get a hold of you and um one last uh, uh plug for your program

Speaker B: so they could just Google neighbor affiliates and uh my contacts ah are on the website. Uh there's also like a context of the affiliate managers, biz dev managers, team leads and all other stuff. Um and what was the second I

Speaker A: was just like you know, how can they get a hold of you? But I'm also not going to forget the notes where you said you've got uh some reports of, like, people can get, like, the games they've played.

Speaker B: Um, they don't have to talk to me. So they can ask the affiliate manager or the contact they get. It's either a sales manager or affiliate manager. So they can ask about all the stuff, all the data, and we could share it with a pleasure.

Speaker A: That is awesome. Thank you so much for doing this.

Speaker B: Thank you.