Episode 1 – Guest Speaker Emanuel Cinca

Andrew Payne: Welcome. I’m your host, Andrew Payne with AffiliateSuccess.com, and you’re listening to Industry Insights. If you’re looking to learn about affiliate marketing, this is the place to be, as I interview some of the brightest minds in the industry, and get them to reveal their secrets and insights to help you find success as an affiliate marketer.

Thanks guys for joining us, I’m Andrew with Affiliate Success. I have a very special guest today, Emanuel Cinca, my friend and affiliate marketer. How are you today?

Emanuel Cinca: Hey Andrew. I’m good, thanks for having me. Quite the honor that you asked me to be on your show.

Andrew Payne: Oh, appreciate it. Thanks for accepting my invitation. It’s the first kick-off episode. The idea behind it really, is just to show different perspectives from within the affiliate industry so we can all get an idea. Our goal is to interview affiliate’s like yourself, of all different levels of experience. Affiliate managers, as well as Traffic Source reps, and others in this space.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, your role, your company, what your background is, and how long you’ve been in the industry.

Emanuel Cinca: All right. Most people know me from STM Forum, I guess where I have the username Manu_Adefy, and just as it happens, Adefy is the brand I’m using for our affiliate campaigns, and everything that we do when it comes to affiliate marketing. I’m basically the founder of that, but I’m working with other people as well now. I’ve been in the industry for, actually it’s a bit … First of May, 2015 is day I started, so now it’s a bit over my two year anniversary in the industry. I haven’t been that long into it, but I think I’ve learned quite a bit and got to know quite a few people.

Andrew Payne: Yeah …

Emanuel Cinca: You included.

Andrew Payne: Absolutely, yeah. You’re … definitely some of the posts and threads you’ve made on STM Forum, were something that I paid attention to when I had jumped back into the forum last year. I knew you weren’t in the space very long, but you have gained a lot of ground and I could recognize that early on, and I kind of followed in some of your footsteps in some ways in my own progress. What first, how were you first introduced to affiliate marketing, and what attracted you to it?

Emanuel Cinca: It was kind of by chance. I’m Romanian, and I moved to Vienna in Austria four years ago, a bit over four years now. That was to start a software development company with a friend, which I knew from my poker playing days. I also used to play poker professionally. We had ups and downs with that, we had a lot of pivots, and then 2015 around the end of April, we had another pivot where one of the key team members said he doesn’t want to continue with us. Then, I just look around, “Okay, what can I do?” “What are the options?” “What can we do now?”

One of the options was from another poker friend, that he was doing affiliate marketing quite successfully, and a few others were also doing it, but as not as successfully as him still making good money. I was like, “Okay, it has some similarities to poker.” People with poker background got into it, it seems something you can do for with a reasonably limited budget. You’d don’t have to be investing like a normal start-ups where you need hundreds of thousands probably to get off of the ground in a serious way. It can be tested really quickly. If you spend a month on it full-time, you probably know if you’re going to make it or not. It was just kind of, “Okay, yeah this makes sense. I’m going to try it out and I’m going to focus on it full-time for one or two months, then I see how it goes.” It was quite by coincidence, and just seeing that it can be a very productive industry.

Andrew Payne: Yeah absolutely, and what traffic type do you focus mostly around?

Emanuel Cinca: I started off with mobile display, but then added pops to my traffic type. Nowadays, it’s actually 100% pops. Display has become a bit competitive because you’re competing with brands, compliance things also changed quite a bit. Things that were completely compliant when I started out, started getting rejected and I mean like, nothing that’s misleading it was just a technicality in how you formulate, or a lack of branding on the banner. When you have 320×50, adding an icon to brand, that takes a lot of space.

Everything that was good for me to use the space efficiently, started not working. Then, that kind of died out. It’s 100% pops right now, though, we do want to get into Facebook. That’s probably something that we can discuss a bit later on maybe on whatever we want to approach later.

Andrew Payne: Sure yeah, absolutely. Quick question about; What are the differences between mobile display and pop traffic outside of the changes and the creative guidelines, and the branding aspect of that? What would you say is the biggest challenge in comparison between the two?

Emanuel Cinca: For pops, it’s … you interrupt the user from whatever they are doing with pops. You need a very compelling angle. Well, how can I put this? You basically, you do need to be more aggressive putting it straight forward. With display, it’s more about getting the user curious, because they see the banner and they will click on it if they see something they like. So, getting them curious, then getting them to your landing page, there’s more intent in display. The thing with pops, being more aggressive pays off … why would display the main asset is kind of a creativity to get that initial tap by the user on mobile or click if you’re running desktop.

Andrew Payne: Excellent, yeah. Good feedback there. Are there particular verticals that you focus on now that you’re in pops?

Emanuel Cinca: We actually did the same verticals for displays as well, they both can work. We’re doing sweepstakes, so the standard iPhone sweepstakes quite a bit, and also utilities. Utilities the things that I started with. If you remember, if you’ve been around in 2015, there was still a lot of DU Battery and a Battery Doctor, DU Booster, and all of those sort of apps were still around. Nowadays, they’re not from what I know. It’s a quick moving industry. Two years ago, things that were crushing it, don’t even exist as an affiliate offer anymore.

Andrew Payne: Yeah absolutely. Even the short span that I’ve been back into the industry, things change almost on a monthly basis. Offers that were there, are no longer there. Then several months later, they come back, and now they’re gone again. Things are just constantly shifting, and you have to stay in the forefront of that to stay ahead.

Were there any breakthrough moments that you had kind of early on, and you’re starting to affiliate marketing, something that just kind of clicked, or saw it to success that kind of pushed you forward and really gave you the confidence to continue pursuing affiliate marketing?

Emanuel Cinca: Well, seeing that first conversion was something interesting, because I remember reading on STM, and thinking like, “Wow, do people actually install this sort of thing?” “Do they do this?” I would never do that myself, that was usually my thinking. But then I just, “Okay, the decision is I have to try it out,” so I put stuff live with my very newbie, not even using Photoshop skills, but anyone knows Gimp … because it’s like a free version of Photoshop with less functionality anyway.

I just made some standard banners, and direct linking on display and was like, “Oh, yeah, some people installed this app. Okay, so this actually can work, it’s real.” I think that’s a breakthrough moment. Even though you hear from others that it can work, you don’t really know the details so you’re like, “Okay, but does it work for me?” Once you’ve figured out that, yes, you can get real conversions, real users … that is, I think a breakthrough in terms of mindset.

Then, seeing progress is actually something that’s always helped, but I wouldn’t call it a breakthrough. It’s just something that encourages you. Seeing the -90% go to -70, and then closer and closer to green.

Andrew Payne: Absolutely yeah. It’s definitely, and that kind of leads into the next question I was going to ask you is; I know a lot of us early on, some of the challenges you face, it could be how to find a good offer, and there’s a lot of questions that I receive all the time about that particular topic. But also, I’ve noticed that a lot of times, it’s someone’s mindset that’s really holding them back, or the lack of taking action, or something along those lines. It could be various things.

For you, What was some of your early challenges that you had to kind of breakthrough, and push past to help make sure that you’re taking … or making progress forward?

Emanuel Cinca: Maybe it was a bit of a special case, but I don’t … I’m not sure if I just got lucky, or if it was just what my situation was, that I focused 100% on just testing and testing and testing, and not really getting … not being paranoid about, “Oh, is this,” like, “Is everything that I’m reading real or not? I will just test all the assumptions that I’ve read about, and then figure it out myself for what I’m doing.” I had a pretty clear let’s say budget, and deadline for trying this whole thing. I didn’t get distracted in the mean time to be like, “Oh, I wonder if I should stop now,” or like, “Oh, I’m getting low on money.” It was always, “Okay, until it’s over, it’s not over, and I’m not going to get distracted by that.”

I think … I don’t feel, thinking of it now that I had a really a big challenge in that sense. The bigger challenge came later on, when things were actually going okay and being profitable. I was still spending all of my time in front of the computer trading campaigns, and then just waking up, “Oh my God, is that thing going to be pause,” or like, “Are my conversions still coming in?” I started waking up at 6:00 a.m. without an alarm clock. I was like, “Okay.” That’s not so good once you don’t do it voluntarily, it’s just like coming out of a nightmare kind of thing, just like, “Oh my God, campaigns.”

Andrew Payne: Yeah.

Emanuel Cinca: The biggest challenge was probably just getting over that sort of feeling that you’re unsure that when you’re not babysitting the campaigns, that they still work.

Andrew Payne: So in other words, dealing with the stress?

Emanuel Cinca: Yeah, especially because … It’s working, you don’t want it to break. Once you succeed at something, to some extent, you just don’t want that to break. That’s … it’s heartbreaking to see stuff that you’ve worked on so hard, not working anymore. I know how people get discouraged. Actually, that’s one of the things that I think many make mistakes at, because you even mentioned it yourself, things change so quickly in the industry, and that’s one issue.

If you don’t put in serious time day after day, by the time you get something to work at least in theory, it’s going to change so that it doesn’t work. So whatever you worked on, it’s not going to … you’re not going to reap what you sow. It’s not good.

Andrew Payne: Sure.

Emanuel Cinca: You have to keep it more … let’s say, it’s best to .. for example, if someone has a job, I would probably favorite the approach of taking time off, and trying these campaigns all the time instead of taking one or two hours a day to be honest.

Andrew Payne: Yeah absolutely. Basically, finding something, and making it work early on in the wave cycle … or the life cycle rather, and making sure that you’re not catching things too late because you’re moving slower.

Emanuel Cinca: Yeah exactly.

Andrew Payne:  Yeah, good stuff. Quick question; You mentioned you had a set budget, what would you suggest or recommend for others who are just getting into the industry, what’s like a minimum budget that they should consider stepping in … given a reasonable opportunity to make it work for them? I know this questions comes up a lot, and everyone has their own opinion, but it’s a question that I think will help address any newbies who are just stepping into the industry.

Emanuel Cinca: Yeah, I have two budgets in mind usually. I think one budget is to test out and see if affiliate marketing works, and that’s kind of like a stop loss in a way, I would call it. Then, after the stop loss, you do need to have access to extra funds. Whether it’s from your own funds, whether it’s from friend and family, I don’t know. I’m not recommending you take out money for campaigns, because they’re quite high risk. But, just keep it in mind that you would need more.

To test out at the beginning, I think you can probably get some decent results with $1.5 to $2,000 dollars, $1000 dollars … I think I used even less, because I just spent so much time on it that all the other expenses kind of paled in comparison to the daily $5200 dollars spent. You don’t get -100% RY all the time, so keeping that in mind, I think $1.5k to $2k is quite the okay budget. But then you have to think about, once you get something to work to some extent, you will likely not get paid weekly. Maybe you’re going to get paid every two weeks, but I think to begin with, you should expect payments once a month, and even that is a bit sometimes optimistic.

You should think of it as having a budget to run enough … run for 30 days without getting paid. After that, for your $2k, you should probably add, to be safe, $5 to 10k would be very very nice, between there. It helps you scale, it helps you not be scared that if you get … whether you get paid or not, and there are delays. Sometimes there are also … your traffic quality doesn’t back out, you might not get paid everything. So everything kind of adds up that you should have some extra funds around the $5 to $10k margin I think.

Andrew Payne: Yeah, I think that’s great advice. Something I also like to mention is that, in addition to what you’re using to spend for purchasing traffic and collecting data, you also want to make sure that you have a separate budget that’s dedicated towards whatever tools and expenses that you have to incur over that period of time that you’re deciding to break into the industry as well. That way you kind of have an idea of a dedicated budget for your ad spend, in comparison to kind of your fixed costs that you’re going to be running just to operate with.

Emanuel Cinca: Yeah, that’s also another thing when it comes to the time you spend. If you pay for volume or thrive, or whatever tracker you’re using, one month, let’s say you have the minimum plan, that’s $100 a month. But if you launch 10 campaigns in one month, you spent $10 per campaign for the tracking approximately. But then if you spend … if you do like 10 campaigns a day, the tracking is way less of a cost compared to a DNL. These sort of ratios, you should have in mind usually, when you think of your budget, and the time you spend on campaigns.

Andrew Payne: Absolutely, yeah. I was fortunate enough to step into the industry with a little bit more of a starting budget. But just to kind of step back to what you were saying, even if you’re starting with a smaller budget of one or two thousand dollars, you can still make it work if you approach things smartly. Just know that your growth is probably going to be a little bit slower until you build up that capital if you don’t have access to the extra $5 to $10,000 dollars like you had mentioned for scaling and so forth.

Emanuel Cinca: Yeah definitely.

Andrew Payne: Everyone comes from a different background. You explained a little bit of how you transitioned from poker into the affiliate industry. What strengths do you think that brought with you into this space? And what are some of your weaknesses? And have you developed an edge for yourself within the industry?

Emanuel Cinca: I think the main strength … it’s a bit vague if you just … if I just say it like that, but I think that’s the truth is; The mindset, and being able to desensitize myself from the money which is just on the screen, compared to the money that’s in my pocket. I don’t think when I look at campaigns that, “Oh, I spent X amount, that’s money from my pocket,” it’s numbers on the screen, it’s kind of like a game. This is coming from poker, so you can see the similarities. You just look at some numbers on the screen, you take action based on those numbers, and then you don’t think of it as money that you had in your pocket or you will have. I do the same for business. Whatever is in the business, is not in my pocket or my money which air quotes. It’s the business money that is going to be used to grow.

As for weaknesses, it’s actually not having worked with people for my initial … like my first job, which was poker. I never really worked in a company, but that also kind of turned into a strength in the sense that I started reading a lot about psychology, and human interaction, all those sort of things. It made me … like I don’t follow, for what we’re doing in our team, I don’t follow the standard advice. I do have some advice from reputable books that I read that is very old school, but I think it makes sense and then I apply it. But whatever I think doesn’t make sense, I don’t apply. It just makes me very flexible in that sense, but I still think that’s the weakness that I have, because I know that it can be so much better than it is now. Not sure if that makes sense, or … I don’t think I’m necessarily weak at that, compared to everyone, but I think compared to what it could be, I’m certainly weak.

Andrew Payne: Sure. Understood. You mentioned that you have a team, and so did you partner with someone? If so, how did you chose? Or why did you chose to partner with someone? Or did you develop more of a team structure underneath you?

Emanuel Cinca: The partners that I have are from the previous ventures. We just kept everything in the same company. It was kind of, we knew each other already. So when affiliate campaigns work, we just said, “Okay, we just do it under the same legal structure, because we have it already done. No point in making a new company, it doesn’t make sense.” Those are the partners that have shares in the company, and the profits. Then, when it comes to team, I just started hiring for the first few tasks that were easily outsourced.

First thing was designing banners, but yeah, now I tried also coders, and it takes some time to find people that fit exactly in the piece of the puzzle, perfectly as you want it. Most of the time, they’re not going to be perfect. That’s something to keep in mind all the time. People … they don’t think exactly like you, so you’re always going to have this communication flow that you have to really work on a lot. Now we’re five people, and it’s going pretty okay I would say. I think for the amount of people that we’re in, we can do quite a bit.

Andrew Payne: Yeah, that’s a good size team to have. Especially, for just being in the industry a couple of years, and already having a team structure of that size. It shows a lot of progress. You mentioned earlier that, one of the breakthroughs you had was that first conversion. Were there any other significant victories that you just felt really proud of along the way? Maybe it was your first really large profitable campaign, or a certain goal that you were able to reach, or maybe just a relationship that you were able to form, or anything of that nature?

Emanuel Cinca: There’s one thing that comes to mind. If you’re listeners might know about Affiliate World, it’s an affiliate conference organized by the people behind STM as well in the forum. Last year, in Bangkok, so 2016 … I got invited on a panel by Mobvista – An affiliate knows where we work with, and it was something completely sudden, and did not expect that. It was just good to know that both our results in terms of campaigns, but also by interaction with everyone there, helped me get on stage. I would say it was quite the personal victory there. It showed me that what I’m doing is right, and has potential for the future to grow more. It’s not just like sitting behind a screen, and nobody cares about me, and what we’re doing.

Andrew Payne: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you see something happening, especially at that magnitude and you feel very rewarded, and just want to get … more motivated actually. So was there any form of education that you applied yourself to to kind of fill the gaps, and to learn about the affiliate industry? Whether it be using the STM forum? Did you have a mentor? Anything like that?

Emanuel Cinca: I used quite … I was always pretty active to begin with on STM, so I wanted to interact with more people in the community, have the follow along, showing whatever I did, and getting feedback from the community on my campaign. Then, one of my poker friends … well, actually a few of my poker friends were also a part in the … part of a mastermind that we had. We were also a group of five or six affiliates that worked … on person was a bit higher level, but others, we were just pretty newbies.

So we shared all the info, and for a couple of months we kept regular calls and updated each other about our campaign. So that helped us quite a bit, I think. Everyone did pretty okay compared to most masterminds, so everyone had some profitable campaigns. Some didn’t completely switch to make it like a full-time thing, but that was pretty good.

As a mentor, it depends on how you define a mentor. Some people say a mentor is just someone you look up to. I think it has to be someone who also helps you quite closely, like thinking of Yoda, and Luke Skywalker types of relationship. So, I didn’t have anyone that was that close to me in that sense. Though I did take advice, I even attended his workshop in London in 2015 from Charles [inaudible 00:22:38], the Accelerator Workshop. I did look into whatever seemed like the best educational option on the market back then.

Andrew Payne: Sure, no that’s good. Yeah, and I agree with you. I think a mentor is not someone you just look up to, but it’s someone who you have a close relationship with and that guides you in some sense. Whether it be someone …

Emanuel Cinca: Yeah, it comes from them as well. They’re also proactive in helping you. Not just you proactive, and asking them question. That’s more like a … not a mentor type of relationship, maybe just the coach type thing which is a bit more colder I think overall.

Andrew Payne: Sure. Yeah, no I understood. From your perspective, from when you first entered the affiliate industry to now, and considering the areas that you focus on within your business; What do you think the state of the affiliate market industry is like currently?

Emanuel Cinca: So like I said, there’s less access to good display inventory. My view, when it comes to affiliate campaigns, affiliate offers, I think it got a bit more difficult overall. I think the barrier to entry had changed, or at least … if someone would try exactly what I tried, I think they would fail. Regulations have changed, there’s a different availability for offers. For example, I started with utilities, and everyone could run the utilities. There was no restriction, and they were mostly uncapped. They just had quality requirements. But, now you need to also have … you need to get manually approved for certain caps.

So, I think if you’re a newbie, and you want to start with utilities, you’re probably just never going to get a cap, and you’re not going to be able to run the best utility offers. I think the barrier to entry changed from utilities to being more towards sweeps, which are more accessible, because those haven’t changed much over the years from what I know. It has changed in that it’s easier to start on pops for sure, compared to display. Back then, pops and display was pretty similar. You could start on either, depending on what you wanted to learn. I think those are two things that describe it best.

Andrew Payne: Good feedback, that’s solid. What do you like most about being in the affiliate industry, and being an affiliate?

Emanuel Cinca: I think … There are quite a few things that I like. What would be the main one? To be honest, I think the main one is seeing the main stream potential that affiliate marketing skills have. You can definitely make it a quote unquote, “a real business,” and you can make it quite a huge business. If you think about it, to some extent, things like Google and Facebook required a bit of help of affiliates and affiliate campaigns.

There’s no name that comes to mind right now about affiliate companies that sold for quite some high numbers. Actually, there was a success story around middle or end of last year on STM that someone who was an affiliate sold for $55 million, his company. He didn’t post the name and everything, you know, people trying to keep it private, but there’s certainly quite some mainstream potential there. That’s one thing that I like, because I’m generally quite … I have high goals.

Then the other thing I like is that people are quite informal, and open about what they do amongst themselves. You’re not going to have so many people in suits and being like, “Oh, I’m not going to talk to this person, because he is not of my level.” It’s pretty informal and open. If you go to an event, it doesn’t matter … you can approach any speaker, and they’re going to talk to you. They’re not going to tell you to go away, because you’re not supposed to be talking to them because they’re special or anything like that. Everyone kind of has a level playing field, and that’s actually …

The third thing that I like is that it’s quite the … It’s a completely open market. If you do things better, you’re going to progress and you’re going to take over anyone who’s been in the industry for many years. It doesn’t matter. Meritocracy is probably at it’s best in the affiliate industry.

Andrew Payne: Yeah, I agree. There’s a lot of creativity there that you can apply, and that can give you an edge over anyone. Even if they’ve been in this space for quite some time. It’s about jumping in, and really applying yourself and thinking creatively.

Emanuel Cinca: Yeah.

Andrew Payne: So what are some things that you would like to see changed within the industry? Is there any parts of it that have friction, or that you would like to see more awareness brought about?

Emanuel Cinca: I would like to see it become a bit more professional and mainstream. So, it doesn’t have to be let’s say snobby or anything … It doesn’t have to be going into, switching to dressing up in suits all the time, and dresses or whatever. It’s just, it should be a bit more … with higher goals to attract everyone in the world, not just find that one person who needs an iPhone. Or, I would like to see more affiliate’s apply their skills in a mainstream industry where they can actually scale quite high. That’s actually …

Oh yeah, and another thing that I would like to see is less people who focus on the quick buck type thing. It’s a thing that’s also quite prevalent on STM. You have questions of; “How can I make X amount as quickly as possible?” That’s not how it works. Timing matters so much, you can do exactly what I did … what worked two years ago, and if you did it maybe two months after, it’s not going to work even. Don’t focus on the immediate results. I would like this mindset to change up also. It’s basically two things about mindsets in the affiliate industry that I would like to change.

Andrew Payne: Yeah, I agree with that. There’s a certain level of professionalism that you can experience in the more corporate world perse. Like you said, I’m not looking for a change in the affiliate space to kind of match that, but I think because of the background of a lot of people learning about affiliate marketing, and they’re just maybe people who have a day job and they’re at home, and they look for ways to make money online. This kind of becomes more of a side hobby kind of thing, and a lot of people don’t approach it professionally in the beginning unless they just really grasp how they need to approach it correctly to start with.

I think that’s something that probably impacts the professionalism within the industry. But then even like your mentioning, you can go to a conference and you like the fact that it’s casual and laid back. You don’t know who you’re talking to … you don’t want to not talk to someone because even if he looks like he’s just got off the plane from the Bahamas, you don’t know really what his level of expertise is, and if he’s someone we’re talking to or not. So you can’t discredit him, and you don’t just to make sure you’re not overlooking a potential or so forth. I agree with that. It’s the mindset, and the short-term quick buck is something that a lot of affiliates getting into the industry don’t understand.

I think they just push really really hard for making that first couple thousand dollars a month or what not. But really, it’s a longer term goal. How do you make this more of a sustainable business that you can replace your income with, and make it a full-time business or at-home job for yourself? I think that’s important for people to pay attention to.

Are there any trends you see developing in the industry that people should pay attention to, or maybe start looking for? Transitions happening?

Emanuel Cinca: Yeah, it’s definitely eCommerce, and using Shopify plus Facebook. That’s … everyone knows that already kind of. I was going to say … I said at the beginning that we’re going to get into Facebook, or like we are getting into Facebook as a team for affiliate campaigns. It’s actually through eCommerce, so doing job shipping. I think eCommerce is certainly one of the trends going on, and it goes kind of hand in hand with the thing that I said that you want … I want the affiliate industry to get more professional.

I think that’s quite a huge step in that sense. If affilates think they can make money online by delivering real products, and real value, and having to also deal with customer support and all those sorts of issues; They basically are forced to become more professional to some extent.

Andrew Payne: Yeah, it’s more of a real business organization required, you have to have all the parts in place.

Emanuel Cinca: Yes exactly.

Andrew Payne: You have to be more serious about it. It’s not just you launch a campaign, promote some offer ad, it doesn’t work. You try a different offer. You have to put more effort into the setup, and the structure of the whole process. You’re more invested in the beginning.

Emanuel Cinca: Yeah, and the trend of going into eCommerce will just go hand in hand with this … quite interesting to see how it develops. Things don’t last forever usually, so …

Andrew Payne: They don’t, but you know, keep in mind that …

Emanuel Cinca: I should get audit right now.

Andrew Payne: Absolutely, and keep in mind, the whole eCommerce and drop shipping, that whole category of online business has been around since the beginning of online businesses. But what’s kind of accelerated it’s popularity now is; One, the amount of information that’s available online, but you also have resources … or softwares like, Shopify, that have a really solid platform that makes it so easy for just anyone to set up quickly, start launching a store of their own, and testing products. Once you perfect, or get a good understanding of how to buy traffic, and the optimized your entire funnel, just about anyone can get into this space pretty quickly.

Emanuel Cinca: Yeah exactly. It’s very similar to what affiliates do with choosing an offer. You just chose a product, and then instead of dealing … the only add on is that you have to deal directly with the customer in quite a few cases.

Andrew Payne: So that professionalism has to be there like you mentioned.

Emanuel Cinca: Exactly yeah.

Andrew Payne: Excellent yeah. So if there was one piece of advice that you could give to someone who’s just starting off, or just getting into the affiliate industry, what’s something that you could give them that you felt … or you feel would help them or have helped you at some point to take that next step in their journey?

Emanuel Cinca: One piece, one piece … It’s not easy to just give one advice …

Andrew Payne: You can give more than one, I don’t care.

Emanuel Cinca: Oh yeah, but if I give too much it’s going to be … we’re going to be here for another hour.

Andrew Payne: Oh okay, well let’s keep it to one or two then.

Emanuel Cinca: Yeah. One piece. The main thing I think is to just take the initiative in your hands, and not rely too much … you should get information from others, but not rely on it completely. There’s this quote that I have from a poker coach back in the day, which I think comes from Bruce Lee, people can Google it afterwards; It went something like, let me just not butcher it, “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, and add what is uniquely your own.” Just listen to what people are saying, then add some … add your logic to it, and what doesn’t make sense, you can ignore. What you’re unsure about, just test, and then through your oldest experience of testing, you’re going to realize some things that people didn’t tell you. That’s what’s uniquely your own to add to everything that’s a campaign.

Andrew Payne: That’s good. I like that a lot. Well Emanuel, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to join us on the Industry Insights series. It’s a great first session. I appreciate all the feedback you gave us, and I’m sure those that get access to this will also really enjoy the information that you’ve shared throughout that. Perhaps as you continue to grow, we’ll have you on in a future episode to give us an update, or to share your progress into Facebook as you break into that space.

Emanuel Cinca: Thanks for having me.

Andrew Payne: I’m Andrew Payne, and don’t forget to join us next time on AffiliateSuccess.com’s Industry Insights.