Publication date: 14 May 2018
Deat friends, we continue our column “Interview with Top” and today we welcome the head of one of the most mighty team in the financial field – Leadmafia. We prepared a number of tricky questions for him, and he, in turn, promised to answer honestly and give some useful advice on working with this vertical! Pls welcome!
Hello! Please, introduce yourself to our subscribers.
Hello, I’m Kostya. And thanks for calling.
Nice to meet you. I hope you are ready to share secrets of top webmasters with our audience 🙂
Mutually. Let’s try 🙂
As far as we know, your team is the leader of the traffic arbitrage in the financial segment, right?
Let’s make a small correction, we are engaged in leadgeneration. This is a more integrated approach to traffic, in contrast to classical arbitrage and media buying, but in general – yes. By the way, our team is called “Leadmafia” and very soon we will present our new platform.
Cool! Tell me, what are you working with and what market are you targeting?
We work exclusively with financial traffic, other areas are simply not interesting to us. At the moment, we work with microloans, loans and credit cards – bank financial products. No crypto, forex, binary, we do not deal with, because we are not particularly interested. As for the market, at the moment we are working with 3 countries: Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Also at a low start in 4 European countries – this is Poland, Spain, Latvia and Georgia. Georgia is not exactly Europe, but since it’s not the CIS, we treat it as an original country.
Tell me, how did it all start?
In fact, my story is long enough … I started to work in this direction in 2014, then I had one of the biggest pack of websites that generated traffic for microloans and with which I had to leave recently.
Why left it, if not secret?
Because it is morally obsolete. And, actually, I had 2 choices: either sell it, or close it. I decided to sell.
Well, let’s get closer to arbitration, your can the field you are working on be attributed to PayDay Loans?
In general, yes, but not quite. We need to share – there is PayDay, and there is Instalment. So, PayDay dies in many countries due to high interest rates, and in this regard, many financial companies make a new product – Instalment, these are long loans that are a direct competitor to bank loans. If you take the Russian market, now only two companies are actively engaged in this: “Migcredit” and “Home money.”
Tell me, please, do you now work more with affiliate programs or with direct advertisers?
Everything depends on the country. In general, our policy is such that we are striving to conclude direct contracts. But! But usually we test offers in networks, and only then we go out to interesting adverts directly and in the future conclude contracts.
Can you name the main advantages of working with the advertiser directly?
Yes, I can clearly distinguish two advantages:
Sane feedback without a Chinese whispers. Let’s explain to beginning webmasters … in many affiliate networks there is a support that works with affiliates, and a support that works with adverts, and information is often lost or distorted when passing through 2 such filters. And by the end it’s completely unclear what happens to your traffic.
Higher payments. But I will say at once, higher payments are not always a problem, because if an advertiser is interested in your traffic, he will give you higher payments through an affiliate network.
I want to note that it happens so, when it is more interesting to work through an affiliate.
In which cases is it more interesting to work through network?
It all depends on your traffic, there are stories when advert doesn’t like your traffic, and you really want to sell it to him. When working directly, you can always see whose traffic is being delivered and through the network it can be mixed a little.
Oh, here we go! Lifehacks 🙂 Is there still such an opinion that networks take on some of the technical problems associated with integration, or is it not a problem?
I can speak only for financial traffic, I do not really trust the affiliate networks in terms of technical abilities. Plus, it’s not very clear how they distribute traffic and whether they distribute it at all. I’m not going to name specific networks now, but there have been cases when you are sending and sending traffic on the same API in some kind of “cool” affiliate network, as they call themselves. And then you will find out that your leads were not distributed, because something broke on the their side, etc., and they can’t see it on their own huge volumes. After all, affiliate network as a vacuum cleaner – suck all the traffic, not looking anywhere 🙂 Plus most of the networks shave and do it unobvious. So, that you will not disassemble.
But the tops cheat a little bit too, right?
Well, cheat in what form?
Send some “shit”, not particularly lead applications in the general flow.
It depends on the traffic. If we are talking about pixel / referential traffic, then it’s quite difficult to send the shit on it, I would say it’s impossible, but if we talk about the API, then there are many simply resubmit old bases of year ago old and think that this will hold up. But no! The network sees all this and this traffic is simply not distributed in 90% of cases. In any case, the whole process of affiliate marketing is built on mutual trust. We can not in any way check whether there was a fraud on the side of advert, or a fraud on the side of the webmaster. I caught myself adverts many times that they spoke on our leads were not ours. Although there were such obvious signs, just HUGE signs, that these are our leads, and they said “no” and that’s it … We do not work with such adverts for a long time.
Well, such a question to give value to our newcomers. We simulate the situation: there is a young webmaster who wants to start working in the financial vertical, can you share some kind of advice or a simple algorithm: where to start, what to do, how to be?
Come to us 🙂
Now we are testing in closed mode our own affiliate program for beginners, and in about a month we will open the general registration. I will say right away that we have a non-standard partner program:
- we work only with financial traffic,
- we have our own offers, which are not in the market,
- we pay for leads,
- hold is only 5 days,
- weekly payments
After all, the main problem of the financial vertical – it’s a long hold for half a month and the same offers in all networks. What does a novice web do? Most often this is some kind of showcase, where he send the traffic and where he has absolutely no conversions. You ask why? Because the webmaster with more turnovers already took all these people. Even if there are conversions, the next payment you have with the hold will be in a month and a half … We have everything happening quickly and at the expense of exclusive offers – with minimal competition.
This is all very tempting, of course, but if we follow the path of classical arbitration, are there proven networks? Simply, you yourself said that most of the networks are shaving, with whom you can now work?
If we talk about affiliate networks, I can allocate loans: leads, leadia, teleport, leadgid. The guys are technically well-equipped and there were no problems with payments. As for the other verticals, the financial traffic is well converted in 3snet. We have been working with them for a long time and I will be honest, there were no delays in payments and other financial adventures. There are a sane and responsive support, an actual offers and openness to various experiments with traffic in the network … I do not want this to be regarded as advertising, but I can recommend it.
Well, let’s say a young web has decided to work with the financial vertical, no matter with you or with the network, what to do next? How much money does he need at the start?
Everything is individual here, if we are talking about classical arbitrage in the financial vertical, then, I think, with a budget of less than 300,000 rubles, there’s no point in starting at all, that is, you need to be ready and understand that this money can be merged. In the scheme that I suggest, you can start working with a budget of 10,000 rubles, because you can receive weekly payment. Here the point is that you need to learn how to work competently in a combination offer – source of traffic.
Well, suppose I have an amount of 10,000 to 300,000 rubles, which source would you recommend?
To begin with, I would suggest trying the VC.ru and MyTarget, there is almost no moderation on financial topics, yes, high competition, but you can work. Yandex – too complicated for start, as the financial traffic there is licensed, but if the webmaster creates his own showcase, this issue basically, can be solved by a guarantee letter – a week of hassle with moderation and everything is okay. As for Google, then I would not even offer to try it at the start, because it’s just hell hell.
Why? Moderation troubles?
I would say that it is almost impossible to pass a moderation there! If a person has no experience and patience, then Google is the last option for him. Because in Google even experienced webmasters are sometimes afraid to plunge in. Yes, of course, the turnover of 40-50 million will cover the left eye with the right hand and pass for moderation, but at the start the account is banned simply automatically.
Clarify, when we are speaking of Yandex, you are meaning adnet Yandex or the search?
It all depends on the talent of the webmaster: adnet is easier, search is more expensive. Plus, many MFOs (micro financial organizations) are sitting in the search and they have a different understanding of the budget and the cost per click. And recently, banks have stepped into the loan thematic, whose budget is really rubber and they can set a CPC – 500 rubles. It is very difficult …
What is your forecast for the financial sector and arbitration as a whole for 2018-2019? Where is the market going?
If we are talking about Russia, then with the probability of 99% by 2019 we will close all PayDay, and by 2022 almost all companies that are currently engaged in PayDay will close or merge with larger holdings or banks.
Tell me, if these niches start to close, do you plan to expand? Go to binary, crypto, gambling?
No, we have a different vertical development. We just go to other countries.
Okay, back to your team, what’s your role? Are you the leader?
Yes, my task is everything works.
Tell us about your team, how many people do you have? What are the differences between working with traffic in a team?
We have 16 people in the team, only 7 of them … okay, 7.5 – webmasters ? The development model is a bit different than that of everyone, the purchase of traffic in the classical version is not so interesting to us, we are gradually leaving it. We have some developments, and if everything works out, then, I’m not afraid of this word, there will be a revolution in the financial leadgeneration market.
How do you choose the team?
In general, the people I work with are my old friends / acquaintances / friends of acquaintances whom we have trained ourselves. Yes, we had experience working with webmasters who stated that “We are ready …”, “We are able to generate traffic!”, Etc. About half a year we were engaged in this garbage and realized that they do not suit us at all. It is easier for us to learn and grow from within the team of a normal person from scratch. Than to take an “experienced” webmaster and tell him that he is a moron, and he is a moron, who watched the video on Youtube, passed some courses, was like seminars and said that he was a tough webmaster and he was knee-deep in the sea. In practice, unfortunately, it’s quite the opposite …
What tools do you use for management? Trello, Asava, Jira?
Yes, we have Trello, but I don’t like it … We use it purely for fixing tasks so that they will not be lost. We do not like to divide the tasks into subtasks, etc. We actually have no bureaucracy in the company, absolutely. If one person leaves – the whole company knows what’s going on. For me it is a normal structure of the company, we do not divide the company into departments, directors and their deputies.
Do you plan further growth in terms of money, or people?
For money, we naturally have growth plans. But for people … globally – no. We have such a policy that if we can automate something, we automate it. The less a person can work, the better.
The last question about the current state of affairs – what is the volume of leads we are talking about?
Since we launched the new network a few months ago, and in Russia only 2 weeks ago, the current volume is about 5000 leads per day. But according to our past indexes – it’s a bit.
And how much then?
Well … everything depends on the country. In Russia, before, we generated 10,000 leads per day. In general, each has his own meaning of little or a lot. For some, 2000 leads is something unattainable. And for someone 5000 is a trifle.
Does it make any sense now to pump your website for organic?
In general, I don’t believe in organic.
Why?
Organic – it’s long and expensive, leadgeneration – it’s fast and a lot. Many people say that it is possible to make a department that will deal exclusively with organic traffic, allocating, for example, 600,000 rubles with a promising year …
But why? What do I get from this – only Yandex and Google know. And if I take this money and will spend it to leadgeneration – I will have a clearly marked result, which is calculated by the formula: how much I will get the leads, how much I will get the money. Organics we used to shoot through itself, even without SEO optimization sites went to the top, generating 2000 leads per month, but in the total amount it’s nothing and I do not see the point. You can deal with leadgeneration: handle the lead, make e-mail, enrich the data, etc. And you can develop the sites. Yes, there are guys who have 3-4 sites, who write news, etc. And they make good money … But! Here, too, someone turns out, and someone does not – this is a quiet content business, this is a completely different game.
Understood. Let’s sum up this small feature and leave this choice to our readers. Thank you for your openness and your answers! Can you give some last words to the young webmasters?
Oh sure! I do not recommend young webmasters to buy unverified courses with too much water. Either learn from trusted people, or yourself: there is a lot useful information in the Internet. I recommend to google Denis Kuchumov’s video and see his videos on the SEO-pult TV, so me myself, basically, trained via it, he clearly explains and the information is really useful, from there you can build out your own foundation and go further. And so, of course a high ROI and good luck in conquering arbitration peaks, I hope it was useful! See you!
Источник: Conversion Арбитраж & Маркетинг
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