Is Affiliate Marketing Dead? We Asked iAmAttila’s Opinion

There has been a lot of change in online advertising in the last few years.

Affiliate Marketing in particular has seen a lot of people come, and quickly go after they discovered it’s not that easy to make money anymore using CPA arbitrage.

This is why we decided to interview one of the top affiliate marketing bloggers in the world, iAmAttila.

We wanted to learn what his take is on the change that’s going on in the affiliate marketing industry and how is handling all the changes and what the future holds.

Q:  Hey Attila, thank you for doing this interview. We really love how you’ve been helping people with your blog over the past 8 years.   But to people that don’t know you yet, please tell us about yourself.

Thanks a lot for this interview, I really enjoy doing them.     I’ve been a full time internet marketer since 2008. I started with SEO, then switched to paid ads in 2012.

I really love how with paid ads I can buy as many visitors as I want to my products and services and make more money just by increasing how much traffic I buy.  It’s really a dream job, and I highly recommend it to everyone that is persistent, willing to learn and has the business spirit.

Don’t want to bore everyone with more stuff about me,   check out my blog iAmAttila.com for the long biography.

Q:   Affiliate Marketing Has Changed a Lot Over The Years,  Charles Ngo recently wrote that Affiliate Marketing Is Dead… What’s Your Take On the Subject?

Yea, I read Charles Ngo’s post about affiliate marketing dying.    I really don’t understand why he’d say that considering he sold a lot of $10,000 courses and made millions selling the dream.     Anyways,  I agree that the old way of affiliate marketing is dead.    When you were able to rip and run the same stuff as others and make money.    These days it’s harder as ever, because as affiliates we’re being ‘moderated’ from multiple angles at once and we must adhere or suffer from ad account bans.

Q: Why Do You Think Affiliate Marketing has changed? What was the biggest blow to the ‘old way’ of doing affiliate marketing?

The endless policy updates, where with each update they introduce a new rule that ‘kills’ affiliate marketing opportunities.  One example I can give is when Google Ads introduced the “Trick to Click” policy update.  You couldn’t add Click Here, Install, and other Call to Actions to your banner ads.  Right away CTR dropped, and you were no longer profitable.   You need high ctr to get cheaper CPC, so you can arbitrage the payout vs cost of acquisition.

Another is the advancement in detecting ‘affiliate marketing’ campaigns by Facebook, Google, Bing, Yahoo and all the other major traffic sources.

And third, people are more aware of the ‘affiliate marketing’ offers out there, and learned to ignore them or straight up report them to Facebook/Google which will get the ad accounts banned.

People just don’t trust everything they read anymore online,  even if the advertorial says it’s from CNN or Forbes, and the words are from a famous person.  (An old affiliate marketing technique, that has gone done)

Q:  Do you think the old way of affiliate marketing ‘dying’ is a good thing?

Well, now we have to work way harder to make less money than before.   There’s some with mega teams from Russia who launch 1000 accounts per day and still make good profits, but they also have to work harder.  In the past it was enough to launch 10 to accomplish the same success.

Is it good?  Well, if I look at it from a consumer perspective then YES.   With all the new policies, advanced detection by traffic sources,   MasterCard/Visa killing trial offers.. the consumer won.

The skills you learn in affiliate marketing are amazing, you can take what you know and do something good.

We are focused on lead generation with networks like Clickdealer where we work on getting leads for companies that do home renovations,  install solar panels,  provide window & door replacement.  Basically we run ads for real companies that need customers to buy their services.

We also build brands in the ecom space that people love,  using high quality products that they’d recommend to their friends.

Q:  Where Do You Think Internet Marketing is headed in the future?

I think there’s going to be more and more ‘cleanup’ of shady affiliate offers.   More policies, smarter AI detecting intent before people launch black hat ads, and regulation from government and payment processors to control these type of offers.

I believe things are going to get more ‘clean’ which means less profit margin, but at least the new age affiliates won’t be banned by Facebook Ads, or hated by every traffic source for slinging shady offers.

So it’s a good thing… if you are willing to work.

Q:  What was the biggest AHA moment for you?

When I stopped being naive, that I can make any offer work and started trusting the data.   Which showed that if an angle/offer is a winner, it will work right away from the start,  I won’t have to spend thousands of dollars to ‘make it work’.

Q:  Tell us about your educational forum, iAmAffiliate.   Why did you create it?

I really, really hate fake gurus that create courses based on outdated information.     Even though many people ‘hate’ me and say I am a fake guru,  I respectfully disagree.

A fake guru is someone that never runs campaigns,  you don’t find them in Skype groups, or engaging with people in niche groups on Facebook about online ads.

I am involved, I am everywhere and launching and testing non-stop.  So I am in the trenches with everyone,  I just help others because I believe in Karma.

The reason why I created iAmAffiliate was because I wanted to help people 1 on 1, and also create a source of information that has current, up to date stuff.  Not outdated, fake guru courses that get published after the fact.

Q:  What is your source of motivation?

My motivation to continue with affiliate marketing despite all the challenges that keep coming up is that it excites me.  I love that it’s constantly changing and we must adapt.  I like how I have to always learn new skills and new things because old methods die really fast.

I am not motivated by lambos, porsches, ferraris like people with no money who are still motivated by materialistic things.    I’m way past that, so what remains is my inner nerd, and entrepeneur that just loves doing and trying new things non-stop.

Q:  How are you dealing with the COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions?

I’m 80% introvert, so for me these lockdowns are just another day in the life of…   lol.   Honestly, I miss traveling with my family and going to affiliate marketing conferences like Affiliate World Europe.

Can’t wait until the masters of the universe, the bosses of our planet decide everything can go back to normal.   Who knows when that will be?

We hope you enjoyed and got value from this interview with the legendary affiliate marketing expert.    Be sure to check out iAmAttila’s blog, and forum at www.iAmAffiliate.com if you are interested about learning affiliate marketing, PPC ads and online advertising.