Hungary has capitalised on its ideal geographical position to become a manufacturing, services and logistics powerbase in Europe. Its excellent infrastructure, ready-made sites, offices and science parks, combined with a good balance of labour costs and quality, make it an ideal location for expanding firms to build a presence within Europe’s huge consumer market.

Topicster sat down today with Hungary based iAmAttila, a very well recognized and respected name in the affiliate marketing world, to talk about his latest book From Zero to Super Affiliate, industry trends, the impact of COVID-19 has had on business and how he got into affiliate marketing. Attila is not just an affiliate marketer and an author he also runs a successful forum iamaffiliate where he loves to share his success story and he tries to provide motivation and inspiration for others who are looking to succeed with their online business.

1. To start off Attila, could you please tell our readers a little bit more about yourself, how did you get started in affiliate marketing and when?

I used to do SEO up until around 2012/2013, then I could not take Google’s updates anymore and decided to learn paid ads. My first campaign was adult dating on TrafficJunky, and Tuan used to be my mentor. Soon after I joined IMGrind and got into pin submits and mobile content billers. After that, I switched over to nutra on Google ads and later on went on to promote CoD health offers on Facebook. Subsequently, I got into crypto and lead generation and I have been doing that ever since. Ecom was always in there off and on, since it’s something that will never go away. During this period I have also created a few brands like Transey, Banners & Landers, Anglesaurus and AdsBabe, that provide services for affiliate marketers from translations to design, angle writing and video editing. I also run the best online community where people can actually learn advanced affiliate marketing techniques and how to manage to scale their campaigns - iamaffiliate.

2. When and what was your first big break that made you realize you are on the right path?

When I stopped trying to run RON campaigns and started focusing on a specific niche and targeting better.

3. Which tip would you like to have had at the beginning of your career as an affiliate?

Do not jump around. Become a master of one vertical and scale it to every traffic source that works after testing.

4. Which of your decisions or actions that you took, do you think were fundamental to your success?

Working with a team from day one, and networking with the right people through forums. IMGrind, STM Forums are really awesome, if you use them to your advantage by posting questions and networking with other marketers. People do not always get this, they just lurk.

5. What is the coolest, yet undervalued tool that you use on the regular day to day basis?

Microsoft To Do List (formerly Wunderlist). This is by far my favorite tool as I can access it from my phone, from my desktop, from my laptop. It shares the same database, and I can share todo lists with employees and just add tasks as they come to my ADHD mind at random.

6. Where do you get your energy and inspiration from?

Having gone through hell when I was a kid. Due to the war in Serbia when I was a young boy, we had to leave and we migrated to Canada. Before the war, I was growing up having everything. From the coolest shoes to the coolest toys but, after we moved my parents could only buy me shoes from Walmart. For me it was hell going through middle- and high school, getting teased that I am wearing Walmart clothes, when all the other kids were all in Nike and other branded clothes and what not. It felt so bad at the time. I promised myself then and there that I am going to be rich when I grow up, so my future kids will never ever have to experience the hell I had to go through. Kids in school can be evil, very evil. So that’s where my inspiration comes from and the drive, the energy to keep going despite endless Facebook bans, and new policies making it harder and harder every single day for affiliate marketers to earn a buck. Payouts do not increase at all to compensate, only the difficulties and the challenges are increasing, so in order to succeed you need to be proactive and dare to test new things.

7. How do you try to inspire others?

By keeping it real. I hate all these fake gurus that claim that you can make one billion dollars a day. Employees of big agencies, bragging that they are ten figure affiliates. I try to stay with both feet on the ground, very stable and keeping it real. However, even by being real and speaking the truth, I still have my fair share of “guru haters”. Proof, that no matter if you are real or fake, there are always going to be people that hate you for whichever reason. You just need to be real to yourself and do your own thing.

8. How has the Covid-19 pandemic influenced your business, did you see any positive trends come from the pandemic and what type of challenges have you faced?

Covid-19 has been a disaster on the agency front. When the media started pumping the panic, two of our biggest agency clients cancelled everything as if the sky was falling down, the very same day.

The only positive that came from COVID-19 is that online shopping went up big time. E-Commerce is at an all time high and delivery companies are doing extremely well. Lead generation is also doing well, since people need more business now than ever. Since COVID-19 pretty much nearly dried up all their clients, they do need new ones. Lucky for me, we have been in the e-commerce & lead generation space for years, so it is really easy to adjust to new verticals as the team has tons of experience running it.

What really makes things difficult, for everyone, are the Facebook bans. On top of COVID-19, they ban anyone and everyone at random for no reason. And you cannot get any help, because they do not have humans replying, like Google Ads, it is 90% robots.

9. You recently wrote and published a book, From Zero to Super Affiliate, can you tell us what has motivated you to write it and what can readers expect to take away from the book?

I decided to write this book because when I meet someone who does not understand what I do, I always lose them at “web design”. Most people are ignorant. They do not know, cannot fathom or believe that there is an industry where you can work when you want, from anywhere and make millions of dollars. They all think it is a scam, MLM, or some rip off waiting to happen. I do not blame them, until I heard and experienced it personally I did not know there was such a kick ass job, or career such as affiliate marketing. I wrote it, so that all these people can get a well rounded understanding of what I do, so I can give it to friends and family tell them “Read this, and then you’ll know.”

10. Could you say that this book is a step to step guide how to enter into the affiliate world or is it targeting also people that are already part of affiliate marketing?

It is for newbies, for beginners who have absolutely zero clue about the affiliate marketing world. It is so newbie, that my guru haters are high fiving each other, fist bumping and popping champagne probably - celebrating that I released what they would call a “course”.

11. Let’s talk a bit about the future, which verticals do you think will thrive in 2021 and what do you think that we can expect from the coming year?

E-Commerce, Lead Generation, Casino and Financial Offers like Supremedia has.

12. You are also running the forum iamaffiliate, what was the idea behind creating the affiliate forum and how would affiliates benefit from joining it?

I created the affiliate marketing forum to meet more people and to be able to help people directly in a place where others can benefit from it too.

I do not want to become a guru that pumps out courses, I do not enjoy being the product. The forum seemed like a great place to be able to share everything out in the open, without it being public.

Other “gurus” charge $3,000 / hour to re-teach the information in the forum that’s available for $49.95 / month.

13.When you see that a paid advertising campaign is not having the results it should, what would be the first steps to try to optimize it for improved performance?

Stop it, and try something else. If it is your own product then try many new angles, and strategies.

For example, no matter what we tested for the iamaffiliate forum, it did not work as well as giving away a free case study, having people opt-in, learn about the forum and what it offers, then retarget them with Google ads that promote specific guides available inside the forum.

This method of promoting the forum is the result of testing many different ideas, and angles.

14. With the latest Chrome 86 release, how do you think it will impact the lead-gen on push traffic?

The push guys like ZeroPark have the top coders on staff who will figure it out I’m 100% sure. Chrome 86 won’t mean the end of push, it will just mean the advancement of the instant alert display ad format.

15. When you are not working, what are some things that you enjoy doing?

I like to do DIY stuff a lot. Recently I changed the spark plugs in my friends Porsche because it looked like a lot of fun. After reading tutorials on the Porsche forum, and ordering the right parts, we swapped all spark plugs in 2 hours. It was quite fun and hell of a rewarding experience. So working on cars is something I enjoy doing as it lets me shut down my brain from thinking about new strategies to beat the bans. Installing stuff related to electricity, repairing things. Stuff like that, I’m quite multi talented in the handyman area because my dad did a lot of hobby projects and I was always eager to help and learn by his side. Sort of how my 4.5 year old daughter Alina is always helping me when I do stuff.

Watching movies is also something I like, although there haven't been that many good movies lately. Cooking outdoors, huge fan of BBQ and campfire cooking. Hanging out with a few selected people, I am not a fan of crowds. Pretty normal stuff for an introvert, I would say.

Attila, thank you for taking your time from your busy schedule to sit down with us today. It was really a pleasure and we would like to take this opportunity to wish you and your loved ones a successful as well as a healthy New Year.

To join iAmAffiliate please visit: https://iamaffiliate.com

To take inspiration from Attila's latest book:

https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Super-Affiliate-Marketing-Starting-ebook/dp/B08KHHRW2Z

Read iAmAttila: Here