Erik Gyepes – I don’t like to follow trends

Profile

Affiliate Marketing Expert, STM moderator, blogger. Erik is a super affiliate from Slovakia who works solo and does everything by himself. He had a corporate job only for 2 weeks in his life, besides that, he is the only boss for himself.

Erik is obsessed with Affiliate Marketing and has been working with paid traffic since 2013. He tried many verticals and traffic sources, had huge success and many stories to tell.

What is your current focus?

In 2020 I want to focus on three main things when it comes to affiliate marketing:

1. Building new assets that I can potentially grow over time
2. Continue working on my campaigns as that’s still what put food to the table
3. I also occasionally blog about affiliate marketing

For over a year my focus went towards running push notification ads.

I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of $ on these ads during last year, they were working really well for me. However, the future performance of push ads is unknown at the moment as there are big changes coming to this ad format this month. That’s why this year I keep my eyes open and looking for new opportunities to invest my money in. One of them is to focus more on building assets, especially web properties. 

Money

I don’t like to pay for lawyers and so on, but it may be your best spent money that will affect the future flow of your  hard earned money. Click To Tweet

Is it possible to start AM with 1000$?

$1000 is not that much when it comes to affiliate marketing. I would probably make it at least $3000 to $5000. This amount of money is much more comfortable to start with in AM.

After that I would slowly start launching campaigns and testing offers.This is actually how I started in AM back in 2013. At my first attempt I realised I don’t have enough money to play. So I stopped until I accumulated more budget and then came back a year later.

You just feel more comfortable when you can afford to lose as this game can be really stressful.

Best country to set up a company for an affiliate?

Everyone needs a different setup that’s best for him. The best thing you can do is find a good tax advisor in your location and see what options do you have. I don’t like to pay for lawyers and so on, but it may be your best spent money that will affect the future flow of your  hard earned money.

Best financial advice in your life?

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket or in other words: always diversify. I wish I could follow it more though, as I also tend to focus fully on one thing, which is kinda going in the opposite direction.

Affiliate Marketing 

I feel that more affiliates will be looking into new things and areas and even leaving the affiliate marketing space. Click To Tweet

Topics on STM forum that everyone should read?

I’ve been on STM since 2013, there has been TON of interesting topics.

I used to save some of those threads though, I will probably dig up some old, but really interesting ones:

• [Braindump] 5 Years Worth of Aggregate Affiliate Marketing Notes
• Secrets of Super High Volume Affiliates
• Whats Your Motivation?
• What is THE MOST Impactful Book You Have Read Related To Internet Marketing?
• How Do You Guys Invest Your Money Outside of IM?

What is the next big thing in the industry?

Affiliates are good at one thing: finding a new big traffic source and milking it out to extreme levels. At the moment I feel that most of the big traffic sources are milked at those levels (and beyond). They still work and make money, but unless another new and big enough appears, things will start to fall apart.

People are fed up with our ads, traffic sources are regulating things and this cannot go on forever. Unless, as I said, there will be a new big player on the market, that affiliates can take advantage of.

So, with that being said and from what I’ve noticed around myself over the last years, I feel that more affiliates will be looking into new things and areas and even leaving the affiliate marketing space.

Many may left, many may start their own startups, SaaS services, launch their own products or even offline businesses. These things are already happening. Just look at how blackhat methods have shrunk over the years and people now do whitehat.

It all depends on the current situation and technological progress in the ad space as well (just look at push ads, nobody had idea that this could be a big thing 4-5 years ago). 

Learn the process manually first and then automate it as soon as possible Click To Tweet

What makes successful affiliates successful?

In my case it’s all about persistence and not giving up. Throughout the years in AM I had very good times and also very hard times. You also have to keep educating yourself. Read and discuss on the forums, talk with other affiliates, your AM’s,  visit conferences and so on. 

This industry is more dynamic than you can imagine, things change very fast and you must be able to adapt yourself.

Worst thing to do when starting affiliate journey?

Giving up after spending your first $xxx. Your initial failure means nothing. Super affiliates fail every damn day. What separates them from the rest is that they keep going and testing and experimenting. Of course it hurts. It always hurts to lose your hard earned money. But it’s what it is. There is no magic bullet. There is no other way around.

We all have to go through this.

Productivity

I don’t like to follow trends. If everyone and their dog is jumping to this new hot thing, I rather feel that I have to stay away and take a different direction. Click To Tweet

What is your working setup? 

Like most affiliates, I work from home. I turned one of the bedrooms into an office.  I’m at home, but at the same time I have my own private space where I can fully focus.  That’s very important as I cannot work when something disturbs me. I’m not the type who can work from coffee shops or coworking spaces.

Last year I gifted myself on my birthday with a standing desk. I’m sitting long hours in front of the screens and my back can feel it after those years.  So now I’m switching between standing and sitting positions during the day. 

I have a 15” Macbook Pro and a 27” Dell monitor with external keyboard and trackpad also from Apple.

That would be my basic setup.

Best book on productivity and motivation?

I’ve read many books on this topic over the years.

Here are my top 3:

• The ONE thing by Gary Keller
• The Millionaire Fastlane by M.J. DeMarco
• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

From time to time I also like to re-read them as everytime I can find something new between the lines, depending on the situation and problems I’m facing at the current stage of my life.

What saves you time when you go about routine tasks?

I’m a huge fan of automating things, or at least making them as effective as possible.

I look at tasks like this: do I have to repeat it again many times in the following weeks and eventually months? If the answer is yes, I automate it.

Simple example is optimising campaigns. Believe me, you will do this a lot … and you will eventually get bored of it and hate it. Going through tens or hundreds of campaigns everyday or at least every couple of days? No. I have scripts which can do it for me in matter of minutes, and they run couple of times per day. Same when it comes to updating campaign costs, uploading landing pages and so on.

So yeah, learn the process manually first and then automate it as soon as possible.

Thinking

$1000 is not that much when it comes to affiliate marketing. I would probably make it at least $3000 to $5000. This amount of money is much more comfortable to start with in AM. Click To Tweet

What you never do that other affiliates do always?

This might sound strange, but I don’t like to follow trends. If everyone and their dog is jumping to this new hot thing, I rather feel that I have to stay away and take a different direction.

For example, when promoting app installs and mobile content on pop traffic was on decline, many people totally changed focus and jumped to dropshipping. I instead stayed with pops and enjoyed lower bids and competition and worked on what I was good at.  At the end, I ended up having my biggest campaigns ever, because there was one great opportunity that I was ready to seize.

Learning

Websites or blogs that you constantly read?

Here are some blogs that I like to read from time to time (some of them have some good pieces, but you have to dig into them for a while)

• Wallstreet Play Boys – The goal of this site is to provide *actionable* advice on Life, Personal Finance and Wall Street
• Charles NGO blog – shortcuts of Affiliate Marketing  
• Wait But Why – A popular long-form, stick-figure-illustrated blog about almost everything
• LifeMathMoney – Learn what the schools won’t teach you – physical fitness, getting rich, common sense  

What are your favourite talks you want everyone to watch? 

• Steve Job’s speech at Stanford University: How to live before you die
• And really anything from Naval Ravikant. I have followed this guy for a couple of years, but recently he appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast which made him quite well-known.
• He also has a great (3h long!) podcast which is a great listen during a long flight. How to Get Rich: Every Episode + Extras 

Thank you for reading

If you enjoy reading our interviews and find them useful, check also our reddit thread and social media pages.

Twitter
Facebook
Reddit

There we post editorial picks, anounses, news and more.
Stay updated!