Hello, community! Today we’re sharing an amazing interview with an equally amazing specialist – Myroslav Lyaskovets, a media buyer who works with traffic from FB and Instagram. In addition to this, Myroslav also hosts conferences and teaches other specialists how to work with traffic.

To date, his “portfolio” includes over 450+ students, and for our readers, he gladly shared invaluable tips that will help you run your affiliate marketing campaigns even more effectively. Enjoy the read!

Hello, Myroslav! You are a well-known figure in the affiliate marketing community, and we also follow your courses. However, our content is aimed at beginners who are just getting into affiliate marketing. Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Hello, of course. I’m 28 years old, though many people think I’m 35+.

I’m from a small town called Dubrovytsia in the Rivne region. I’ve been working exclusively with traffic for 6 years now, in FB & INSTAGRAM.

It all started with my own online store on prom.ua, where I sold replica watches and men’s accessories. Then I opened an offline second-hand store, which I closed after 3 months. After all that, I went to work as a targetologist in an info business project. That’s when my active career as an FB specialist began.

In one year, I managed over $1 million in ad spend. Then I had my own agency that sold targeting services, which eventually evolved into a small affiliate marketing team.

You work with traffic from FB. Meta is currently trying to adapt to Europe’s antitrust laws, which is causing changes in their key services. How has this affected affiliate marketing? Has it become more difficult to work with ads on FB?

Specifically on this case, I haven’t noticed significant changes in launching ad campaigns yet. There are some quirks with traffic optimization, regardless of the advertising objective you use; it feels like it works sometimes, and sometimes it doesn’t. I haven’t found a solid solution to this yet, but I hope to figure something out soon. And now there are also issues with inflated CPM. It’s now often 2-3 times higher than normal. Sometimes manual bids help, but then FB doesn’t want to spend the budget. You have to choose either an inflated CPM and spend as usual, or lower the budget but keep CPM in check.

Do you see any real alternatives to FB, even in the near future? Something that would have similar targeting tools and wide reach?

Personally, I haven’t found a direct replacement for FB yet. As an addition to FB – yes, but not as a replacement. FB combines a lot of things: the number of active users in each GEO, the number of optimization options and landing pages, and many technical tricks that simplify launching ad campaigns.

The closest replacement is TikTok, but it has its quirks that make it hard to work with. You need to put a lot of effort into creatives and their format. Just an image with a skincare product and blurred text won’t work. You need to order UGC content, which often costs a lot, and that creative burns out in a few days, so you start all over again. TikTok also has very strict manual moderation, which sometimes doesn’t even allow white ads.

If we’re not talking about a direct replacement, then I would probably mention Google. Many teams that were running FB are now trying Google; we’ve also experimented with it, but we lack the time to fully master it.

What verticals do you think are the best for beginners who plan to drive traffic from FB? Apparently, most grey verticals are not suitable, or are they?

In short, I always recommend beginners start with something white (trendy or unique e-commerce, MFO, insurance, e-commerce, white crypto like Binance, Whitebit, etc.)

Yes, these verticals might be less profitable, but they give you a very strong foundation on which you can build anything in the future.

With these verticals, there are no issues with bans and large startup costs. You can calmly go through all the technical and logical processes (prepare technical details, create landing pages, make creatives, launch, and most importantly – analyze the campaign). And only then, you can slowly develop in white verticals, or gradually move into grey areas, filling in the gaps in your knowledge on elements needed for grey verticals (learning about trackers, cloaking, auto-posting, choosing offers, etc.)

I’ll tell you more: 8 out of 10 top team leads, buyers, and team owners I know started with white verticals. Some time ago, I made a post on this topic on my Instagram, specifically for beginners, to show them that they shouldn’t jump into grey areas right away. You can read it here.

We recently wrote a review on what verticals are considered the best for beginners and focused on white. Do you think this is correct, or is it better to start with grey to gain experience in bypassing moderation, buying or farming accounts, and so on?

Yes, I’ve already explained why above. Among the classic white verticals, I would highlight two: E-commerce and MFO (microloans).

Pros of E-commerce:
+ Understandable products that you promote
+ Easy to find a direct supplier or affiliate program
+ Almost no bans
+ Doesn’t require super skills at the start
+ Doesn’t require knowledge of cloaking
+ Doesn’t require understanding of some super technical stuff

Cons of E-commerce:
– Offers that are completely overused (sorry for the language), but they still get launched and make a profit
– Affiliate programs often have crappy products, but people still like them
– It’s crucial to have a great call center, without it, the entire funnel can fall apart
– Upselling additional products or “air” is key; just selling one product directly (talking about trending products) in profit is UNREAL.
– Often you’re left wondering if you’re doing something wrong or why users are visiting the landing page but not buying)))

Pros of MFO:
+ Basically the same as e-commerce
+ The product solves a significant pain point for the target audience: money.
+ There are good guides and articles in affiliate programs on how to run MFO campaigns

Cons of MFO:
– Making MFO profitable is a real challenge
– Without retention (SMS campaigns, push notifications, retargeting, and brokers), it’s almost impossible to make a profit
– FB sometimes inflates your CPM 3-4 times the standard rate, just because you’re running something related to finance
– Ideally, you need to understand trackers, but you can try your first launches without one
– Offers in affiliate programs are already “used up” by older and larger market players, but that doesn’t stop you from finding new approaches and running profitable campaigns

It’s important to set a goal at the beginning not to make money, but to buy experience with the smallest budget possible, which you can later expand and turn into earnings. Just accept that the first $500 you spend will go towards buying your experience, and that’s it.

What about accounts? For your projects, do you buy them, or do you and your team farm them yourselves?

I have very good terms with a farm department that gives me farmed accounts FOR FREE. But, for example, we buy auto-registered accounts, business pages, business managers, agency, spending accounts, etc., from good sellers.

My attitude is good since we often work with it in terms of traffic. FB is aggressive, but there are still many ways to launch and test it at the moment.

Now the bigger problem is not launching, but finding quality traffic. Since the main launch method through Android apps is almost dead, guys have started testing other launch methods (iOS apps, PWA, direct links) – the traffic quality there is a bit worse, and advertisers often manipulate this and cut payments.

But overall, it’s still possible to work. As for profit, it’s dipped a bit now. If teams were talking about an average ROI of 80% across the team before the New Year, now it’s around 40%. What will happen next – who knows, but everyone is still pouring into this vertical.

What would you advise beginners who have decided to try themselves in affiliate marketing? Where should they start, and what minimum budget do they need to have a chance to turn a profit?

The first thing you need to do is build a super solid foundation in working with a traffic source. A super solid foundation without any major setbacks can be formed in the white verticals I described above. Only after you’ve launched there, understood all the logical processes from start to finish, and most importantly, learned to ANALYZE THE SITUATIONS that arise and the numbers you get, can you slowly move into grey verticals.

Start learning about what a tracker, postback, auto-posting, cloaking, etc., are.

If you approach it wisely, initial tests will require around $200-$300. Then you’ll need to allocate another ~$300 for tests in grey verticals. After that, you’ll gradually start investing money in testing funnels. One by one, you’ll change the variables (accounts, landing pages, creatives, offers, affiliate programs), look at the numbers, and try to pull everything into profit.

What are the top 3 skills you think are necessary to become a great affiliate? Maybe you focus on certain qualities when selecting students for your course.

1. Google it. When a question arises, look for the answer on Google or in TG chats. In 90% of cases, someone has already asked this question and received an answer. This way, you’ll find the answer faster and save time, and you’ll bother your team lead less, for which they’ll thank you.

+ Whenever you ask someone something, immediately give your own hypothetical answer to the same question. This way, you simplify communication with the person. They’ll answer faster and see that you’ve already made some effort to solve it, and they’ll be more likely to help you.

2. Think analytically. Probably one of the most important skills of a buyer is being able to analyze what you’re running. First, you need to learn to identify situations that can be analyzed, second, know how to analyze them (break down the metrics), third, develop hypotheses about why it happened, and fourth, change something to get a different (preferably positive) result. This is the super foundation.

3. Be a good person. I really like how Dmytro Kichaty, the owner of the Trident team, put it: “It’s not difficult to turn a good person into a great specialist, but turning a great specialist into a good person is almost impossible.” It’s important to stay simple, normal, adequate, proactive, non-toxic, honest, not make empty promises, not stress out your colleagues, and not be overly persistent. That’s the super foundation.

We really like the way you communicate with your audience: in a simple language, not shying away from using profanity. We also try to deliver our message to our readers in a straightforward way. Are you familiar with our content, and how would you rate it? Maybe there are topics we should cover but haven’t gotten around to yet.

Thanks for the feedback. Your content is cool, but I miss more reviews on other verticals besides gambling. Find teams or affiliate programs for dating, nutra, MFO, e-commerce, sweepstakes, white crypto, insurance, etc. Explain why these verticals are interesting and break down the entire process of launching campaigns. Expand people’s horizons so they can forge their own paths instead of following the beaten ones.

We sincerely thank Myroslav for the honest and extremely useful interview! If you still have questions, you can ask them directly to Myroslav, or join our cozy Telegram community and discuss it together!

Best regards, Your Geek!

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