What is an entrepreneurial approach in arbitrage, and how to apply it? How to succeed in media buying and stand out from ordinary traffic providers?
How do you maintain motivation within a company, even during challenging times, and what does having a professional approach to arbitrage mean? Valeria Borisova, HR Generalist at Just Traffic Pro, sheds light on these topics.
You mentioned in your company’s description that you are a team where each member possesses a strong entrepreneurial mindset, not just “arbitrageurs.” What sets apart specialists with this mindset from those who merely generate traffic?
Firstly, it’s about their attitude towards money: the money they earn and the budget they spend on advertising campaigns. Many arbitrageurs think like this: “Ok, I close the month with a $5,000 loss. Well, it happens. No dice.” The buyers we work with treat the company’s money as their own.
They know how to manage significant budgets and understand when and why they should go all-in or slow down. They also possess strong analytical skills, including the ability to analyze unsuccessful campaigns in detail to minimize such instances in the future. Mediocrity arbitrageurs often don’t delve into what went wrong or why something worked well because they may not find it interesting (in which case, there is no room for growth).
Another distinction is that traffic providers often adopt a passive approach: they want everything ready-made and prefer to execute tasks as instructed. On the other hand, a buyer with an entrepreneurial core strives for autonomy and independence, taking the initiative in deciding which traffic to generate, which geos to target, and which algorithms to use. They set their own goals and work towards achieving them.
We consider such buyers partners, investing in them and providing the necessary tools and freedom to act. In turn, they generate profits for themselves and the company.
How do you use technical and marketing approaches to acquire traffic?
We work with two verticals: Nutra and Gambling, and each requires a different approach. Regarding Nutra, we use Keitaro and work with links, combining whitehat methods with landing page builders. This is the technical aspect. Additionally, our Nutra team includes a promotion specialist.
As for Gambling, we use Binom and Android and iOS applications. We pay special attention to working with and experimenting with creatives, which involves a team of professional designers.
In terms of marketing approach, our teams always generate a set of hypotheses that are tested on traffic. We study our competitors, analyze their methods, and draw conclusions. We constantly stay on top of market trends.
What helps your team maintain your team’s drive to success? Many companies eventually succumb to challenges and close their businesses, yet you have been in operation for over 5 years.
Actually, over 6 years now 🙂 Our longevity results from various factors, not just the team’s essential motivation. The existence of a team depends on each member fulfilling their role: owners, team leads, buyers, and other departments. One of the keys to success is professionalism.
We don’t hire inexperienced individuals for training; our entry threshold is high. The only exception is the assistant to buyers when needed, but even for that role, we consider juniors with specific confident skills.
Additionally, we allow buyers to focus on essential processes and relieve them of tasks that can be delegated to other specialists (technical work, routine tasks, etc.) Staying motivated is challenging when you must be a jack of all trades.
A systematic approach to business processes is also crucial. The sequence of actions matters. A process must be more streamlined, and success is likely if you plan to scale the associated activities. We prefer to act logically and steadily.
Media buying is a dynamic and ever-changing field, demanding a structured approach. Otherwise, chaos ensues. Each company must determine its development pace and attract people willing to move at the same rhythm. This significantly affects team motivation. If someone can’t keep up with the company’s growth or their ambitions outpace events by years, they will be demoralized and unlikely to stay with the team.
Adapting quickly to market changes is also essential for companies to survive.
Have your buyers ever opened their projects together with you? (Or have they become partners?) Can you share some case studies?
At the moment, we don’t have any joint projects with buyers. However, we are open to considering such opportunities. We have had cases where two of our employees joined the team as buyers at the start of its existence. They later became team leaders and eventually transitioned to junior partners. Besides individual financial motivation, they have the opportunity to impact process optimization and company development significantly.
Which markets are you currently working with? Which ones do you prefer to work with more, and why?
We focus heavily on working with Facebook, so we have no specific market limitations. In general, we operate worldwide. Regarding priorities, it’s European markets and Latin America (mainly due to language adaptability, making it easier to customize advertising funnels). To a lesser extent, we generate traffic for Tier 1 countries.
Naturally, we do not interact with an aggressor country or the CIS region. Historically, we had very little involvement with the CIS, and even before the war, such geos were not of interest to us.
You also mentioned working with exclusive offers. Can you give examples of such offers you have worked with and can discuss them?
We strive to create opportunities for buyers to run on exclusive offers. We work less with affiliate programs and prefer to work directly with advertisers, sometimes allowing us to work under complete conditions, taking all the caps or competing with other teams for caps and rates.
For example, we have worked with a Nutra offer on exclusive terms with a partner such as SkyLead.
Do you have any case studies of impressive profits from previous connections? Ones that can already be showcased?
We periodically share our case studies in various media. For instance, one of the latest published ones was about our work with an adult offer from SkyLead (Mexican geo). The case is interesting because we worked with this offer for an extended period of 11 months! As a result, we achieved a profit of $239,000 with an ROI of 107%, with an average lead cost of $2.5.
What are the most prioritized verticals for you now, and why? Do you plan to attract new ones in the future?
In addition to our two main verticals — Nutra and Gambling, we are experimenting with whitehat offers. Currently, we plan to focus further on these directions. In the future, we will likely test new ones.
What sources do you use primarily to generate traffic? Is it challenging to enter them from scratch?
Currently, 100% of our traffic comes from Facebook. This year, we decided to expand the range of traffic sources, so we are now looking for media buyers with solid expertise in PPC, UAC, TikTok, and others. We are considering various options.
Regarding Facebook — it is relatively easy to start from scratch as there is a wealth of information on creating advertising campaigns on Facebook and many educational materials. The most challenging part now, as before, is finding a working combination.
This will depend on your market knowledge, the offers you will test, and the initial bid.
Exploring new sources is much easier than working solo within a team. We have noticed that solo work for media buyers is becoming less common, as one person has to handle many processes.
As we move forward, more teams will be formed, evolving into media buying companies, where many processes will be set up, infrastructure established, and media buyers can focus on their expertise, such as creating advertising hypotheses, campaigns, and scaling working combinations.
How do you maintain traffic quality from different sources for your partners?
For Nutra — we conduct split tests, refine promos, regularly and qualitatively get feedback from partners, proofread promos, and target according to partner recommendations.
In Gambling, we try to use highly relevant creatives, incorporating popular slots; push notifications based on events; and targeting as per advertiser’s requirements. Additionally, our extensive expertise in working with Facebook, where we currently concentrate our efforts, plays a significant role.
Do you use any proprietary spy services? What makes them unique?
No, we use everything available on the open market.
Which AI technologies can currently be considered the most useful for working with traffic?
AI is a hyped topic, but the market is still in the early stages of formation. Our designers are testing AI in creating creatives and have also experimented with generating ad texts. Undoubtedly, artificial intelligence will significantly assist in media buying in the future and simplify many processes.
Do you have any open vacancies for today? What criteria do you use to select candidates?
We have an open position for a Business Development Manager (BizDev) for gambling. Additionally, we are always looking for media buyers, which is our high priority. We consider specialists with solid experience in gambling and nutra across various sources.
The criteria we pay attention to include the following:
- Strong work experience. This encompasses the buyer’s ability to work effectively at each stage of the campaign funnel, from lead generation to scaling. Statistics show sufficient knowledge can be gained within 8-12 months with systematic diligent work.
- They have case studies that demonstrate previous results. Unfortunately, candidates often tend to embellish their experience and achievements. Statistics with specific numbers help put everything in perspective and allow us to focus on interviewing the strongest candidates. Given the volume of candidates, this selection stage significantly helps optimize the hiring process.
- Personal qualities are also essential. If a candidate has a robust internal motivation, doesn’t give up easily when faced with difficulties, doesn’t blame others around them, is disciplined, and is enthusiastic, they are a good fit for us.
Overall, we are constantly on the lookout for talent. If a person is an expert in any role related to affiliate marketing, we communicate with them and see what we can offer now or in the future.
So, if you’re a professional, please contact us on Telegram @ASU_Personal. Sometimes, we invited specialists to join our team even if there was no active job opening for their specific role. Sometimes, an offer creates demand.
Can you mention the critical conditions under which a novice arbitrage specialist can become a true entrepreneur and partner?
First and foremost, it’s important not to spread oneself too thin. Allocate time to try oneself in different verticals and traffic sources but know when to focus on the priority and most interesting ones. If you try to develop everywhere and all at once, you won’t gain deep expertise in any specific direction.
The people you orient yourself towards and surround yourself with, and those from whom you take inspiration, also play a significant role. Many individuals, having heard stories about “overnight success” and easy money from certain famous personalities in the media buying field, join teams and sit and wait for everything to work out for them magically.
Let’s be realistic: the journey’s beginning always requires diligent work. Initially, you work for experience, and then experience works for you. Only the most hardworking individuals, those with determination, succeed in our industry. Laziness will never allow someone to become a team lead, let alone a partner in a company.
Another valuable quality is constantly finding solutions in any problematic situation. Even if it seems like everything has failed, a professional will find options and opportunities that others wouldn’t see. This sets apart someone with an entrepreneurial mindset, a true achiever.
Read more: Top Gambling Affiliate Programs
