Interview with Clickbaza owner Dmitrii Golopolosov

1. Tell our readers who you are? What are you doing? How many years in affiliate marketing?

I’ve been doing traffic since the early 2000s. In those years it was traffic from searching engines, after that we added our own projects, then purchased traffic, and so on. I’ve been involved in arbitration in the form that is now accepted in the community for a year since 2016. But in fact, I resold traffic 20 years ago.

2. How were the holidays? Vacationing or working?

I spent time with family and friends while still managing work issues. I celebrated New Year’s Eve at the dinner table, not at work 🙂

3. Have you summed up the results of last year? Which are the TOP 3 achievements that you are proud of in 2023?

Projects showed greater growth than we planned. We have entered new GEOs.

4. What are the goals for 2024?

According to the plan, we have a year of optimization and automation. The remaining goals are derivatives of these two ones.

5. What do you think is the main secret of your success?

I’m stuffy, I keep doing it until it’s done. Persistence and a pinch of luck.

6. Can you name 3 books that really helped to improve your work efficiency?

• The book from the author of the “black swan” concept: “Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life” https://www.amazon.com/Skin-Game-Hidden-Asymmetries-Daily/dp/042528462X
• The book from one of the creators of Paypal (read the original only, the translation is terrible): “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future” https://www.amazon.com/Zero-to-One-audiobook/dp/B00M284NY2 /
• The book from a Nobel laureate in economics (also read the original only): “Thinking, Fast and Slow” https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555
• and bonus: “Time drive: How to have time to live and work” by Gleb Arkhangelsky https://www.mann-ivanov-ferber.ru/books/tajm-drajv/

But in general, I want to say that everyone has something different and needs to find “their” books.

1. Single person or team work: what is the easiest and most effective way for a beginner to start? What is better for an advanced affiliate marketer?

I’m always for the team option.

2. What was the most difficult time for you in affiliate marketing? How did you get out of it?

It was difficult when the traffic in the networks dropped in quality with the simultaneous increase in competition. It was possible to survive only due to optimization of work and pre-monetization of traffic.

3. How do you assess the evolution of the arbitration industry over the past 10 years?

In my opinion, development is following the standard scenario: consolidation. The entry threshold increases, the large ones become larger, the small ones become smaller/die.

4.  Can you announce your profit figures for the last year?

No

5.  Can you tell us about the Clickbaza advertising network?

We chose the best time to start: right before the pandemic. Actually, the pandemic buried our daring plans. Now we use the created software to work with sites directly, acting as the only advertiser. There are plans for development, but now I will not reveal them ahead of time.

6.  Are there any new projects in development now? What is your main focus right now?

As I said earlier, the focus is on process automation. Like modern developments in the field of AI, we are trying to replace routine tasks with software and help employees make decisions in tasks that require working with big data. At the end of last year, we increased spending on developers by 4 times.

7.  How do you evaluate the future of affiliate marketing and what trends do you see on the horizon?

I think that relatively soon bots will trade traffic with each other, minimizing human participation. The future of affiliate marketing for those who cannot be part of this process is rather uncertain.

8.  Do you use AI in your work? How exactly? Which are the TOP 3 AI services that you choose for yourself and why?

Yes, we use AI to work with texts and pictures, but so far the results are not so good that we can abandon manual work. There is no TOP, the team tries to try everything that can be useful in their work. But, as I said earlier, there is no wow effect.

9.  What tools and platforms do you find most effective in your work?

Of the third-party services, we only use Keitaro for some tasks. I consider it the best in his field.

10.  How do you decide on offers and GEOs choice for your campaigns?

To start working withGEO, we need to evaluate the possibilities for purchasing news traffic (for us this is the basis), and also understand whether affiliate programs (rarely this is just one affiliate) can provide a sufficient variety of offers so that we can use our best developments.

But with offers, everything is much simpler: we take an offer and put it in a split — if the mathematics suits us, then we continue working. The rate and approval are secondary; they do not always reflect the potential of the offer. And working with the CPA manager is extremely important — a lot depends on him/her.

11.  What advice would you give to beginning affiliate marketers, based on your experience?

Go to the team, don’t think that you’re the smartest.