The main responsibility of support is solving technical issues. But many people think that support also helps with other launch-related problems: working with accounts, proxies, approaches. In reality, all of this falls within the affiliate manager’s area of responsibility.
An affiliate manager is the person every partner can contact, for example, by texting or calling with any request directly related to traffic. For instance, you can ask which offers are popular right now, which GEOs have not “burned out” yet, what approaches are currently trending, and so on. This is especially valuable for beginners. If you are just starting out in your affiliate marketing career, please refer to the article. Remember: a web’s profit is every affiliate manager’s priority.
In my experience, far from everyone understands the difference between an affiliate manager and support at an affiliate program, and this is not limited to beginners. Can you clearly explain who is responsible for what?
Many people think that support and an affiliate manager have the same tasks, expertise, and knowledge. However, these are two completely different areas of work.
Support handles purely technical issues. You do not go to them when you have difficulties with a traffic run. An affiliate manager, on the other hand, is exactly the person you can message or call with a request like “let’s pick an offer, urgently.” The manager helps with creatives, apps, and, again, selecting offers with the best conversion. They will tell you where and when you should run traffic. Another important point is that affiliate managers have access to other partners’ statistics and to the internal buying team, so the information is always verified and up to date.
Affiliates are usually in touch with their webmasters around the clock: if an urgent question comes up after midnight, partners contact them rather than support. Unlike support, affiliate managers can explain the inner workings of the industry, compare different approaches, and so on. If you need to decide on an offer or GEO based on your own experience, budget, and expectations, this is a question for an affiliate manager, not support.
A manager’s work is not limited to monitoring and reconciling metrics or handing out offers. They look for working combinations for each partner and coordinate with the internal buying team so they can advise or assess the current situation, not just test an offer. An affiliate manager is, if we are looking for an analogy, your godfather, matchmaker, and brother — and you are pretty much helpless without them. With a good manager, anything is possible: storms and bans are easier to get through because they know how to lift a partner’s spirits and restore their optimism and desire to work.
Now let’s talk about GEOs. How do you choose one correctly? Is there a certain list of countries where you can run the maximum amount of traffic at minimum cost? What nuances should you consider?
To choose a GEO properly, it is better to immediately describe your experience and budget to the affiliate manager and answer all follow-up questions. The easiest way is to directly ask the affiliate about the average install cost and conversion rate, because they definitely have this data.
Next, you need to estimate how much money will go into testing and finding working setups — this is the most important thing. I’ll be honest: the combinations that make it into the public space are significantly worse than those webmasters find themselves. Of course, you can and should borrow ideas, but I do not recommend completely copying a competitor’s setup.
Beginners often have a limited budget and mistakenly believe they can quickly “make it big” in Brazil, Africa, or Kazakhstan — supposedly because traffic is cheaper there. In terms of volume, these markets really can generate decent profit, but with a small budget, especially on your own, scaling up in these markets is extremely difficult.
Let’s imagine we want to make $300. There are two ways to do it: get 10 deposits in Brazil or one deposit in Canada. If we take Brazil, the cost of each individual deposit is lower, but this does not include the cost of creatives, apps, accounts, and other expenses. And this is where the main difficulty appears — you need to beat the baseline and meet KPIs that are often tougher than in Tier-1 GEOs: players need to return to the casino, have high LTV, an average session duration, and so on. And, of course, the Brazilian audience has significantly less money than audiences in first-world countries.
So it turns out that to get 10 deposits from Brazil, you will have to spend around $300+ (and that is still a good scenario!) — and you will roughly earn the same amount. On top of that, I see a trend of rates steadily declining over the last year or two.
Now let’s talk about one deposit in Canada. It will cost approximately $150, while the profit under normal conditions can reach $300. Yes, the process is longer and more difficult, but the money actually works and generates profit. Note: all figures above are approximate and do not include associated expenses.
Therefore, to accurately choose an offer and GEO, it is best to contact an affiliate manager: they will suggest an already tested option with stable conversion and an install cost they are confident in themselves.
Ultimately, the web and the affiliate have the same goal — running traffic profitably.
And don’t forget: learning from other people’s mistakes is always cheaper than learning from your own.
To sum up. The choice of GEO depends primarily on the partner’s budget and experience. With a limited budget, it is worth starting with GEOs where you can potentially get the maximum number of leads for the minimum amount of money, analyze the market, consult affiliate managers — and make decisions based on that.
Which offers and GEOs should you run traffic to today?
Our main principle is to bring only working offers into the affiliate program. So it really depends on the webmaster: when selecting an offer, we start from the partner’s preferences. When developing advertising materials, I actually always recommend checking which slots and crash games are available in the product. In other words, the “classics” consistently work across most GEOs: Plinko, book-themed slots, fruit-and-candy themes, crash games like Aviator, Chicken Road, and so on.
The key is recognizability. And the ability to highlight some “feature,” for example, specific gameplay changes in Chicken Road. But you should beware of misleading creatives and check whether the slot is actually available in that particular casino. So, when choosing an offer, it is really better to ask the affiliate manager for advice rather than decide without proper analysis.
One Partners works with both juniors and seniors: we have 800+ offers to meet every webmaster’s needs.
GEO trends are constantly changing. As of now, for example, in LatAm, which was a trend for a long time, “burned-out” GEOs are already appearing. Webmasters are experimenting with Africa, looking for new approaches to the ever-relevant Tier-1, and so on. Some Asian countries — Bangladesh, the Philippines, India, Indonesia — are also being talked about. So you need to keep up with all changes in the market. If anything, your affiliate manager will let you know.
How does working with Western advertisers and partners differ from working with webmasters and advertisers from post-Soviet countries?
Working with foreign webmasters is easier — they seldom argue over traffic. Ukrainian webmasters sometimes commit fraud but do not admit it and try to convince you that the traffic was “clean,” even though they cannot confirm it with screenshots.
Even when traffic quality is low, and the advertiser is unhappy with it, foreign partners calmly continue working, adapting the traffic flow to the feedback and comments. Working with our advertisers is easier in another sense — the market is structured differently. They respond faster, and it is easier to negotiate compensation for technical issues on their side. The reason is that affiliate programs often have to take into account the webmasters mentioned above.
Foreign advertisers, on the other hand, are in no hurry. Reconciliations are done once a month, and they pay not on Net 14 or Net 30, but on Net “million.” It is practically impossible to predict when the money will arrive because they may respond in chat once a week. On the other hand, it is easier to negotiate an uncapped limit or a rate increase with them — they do not try to save money on this.
And what do you do with offers that nobody runs traffic to?
There are actually quite a few such offers. They were needed by a partner “yesterday,” but as soon as we add them to the system at their request, the webmaster may say, “don’t need it anymore.” Or they simply stop responding. This really annoys affiliate managers: you involve the whole team, a bunch of resources, and the webmaster just disappears without any explanation.
If an offer sits untested in the affiliate program for two or three months, we hide it from partners. But if the internal buying team tests it and gets a good result, the offer is opened again and starts being offered together with ideas for combinations. In other words, all offers visible in the affiliate program are guaranteed to be working, while “questionable” offers are hidden so as not to confuse partners.
How often do webmasters ask odd questions? In general, what strange questions do you get in your DMs from media buyers? Is there a lot of that?
Good question. During my time in this position, I have communicated with a large number of partners with different levels of experience — and, as a rule, their level of preparation for running traffic and knowledge of the industry is obvious from the very first question. For example, when asked about their traffic source, a new partner might answer something like “Kyivstar” or “Wi-Fi” instead of naming an actual source. Not great. It makes you wonder: why waste both your own and someone else’s time? Yes, we are ready to help beginners, but those who take the work seriously and are willing to grow.
Because it also often happens that late in the evening, when you are already relaxing or even in bed, your phone starts ringing with calls from a partner who writes, “need an offer ASAP, launching traffic now, everything will be fine.” We often have to accommodate such requests, but there have been very few actual launches afterward — usually there is no traffic at all the next morning. It is not the most pleasant experience when partners effectively abuse the manager’s trust.
Another category is inexperienced webmasters who ask for lists of 10–30 offers across different GEOs and immediately for several traffic sources (for example, working with TikTok while also wanting offers for PPC, ASO, UAC). There is little point in such a request because, in my experience, it ultimately does not result in a single real launch.
Do webmasters ever ask for money personally for their launches?
Oh yes, that has happened, and more than once. Sometimes a partner reaches out saying, “give me 300 hryvnias for the launch, I don’t have money for a new account.” Affiliate programs do not finance traffic launches. Yes, they help resolve issues and pay commissions for traffic, but they do not give or lend money for launches.
It often goes like this: the webmaster registers on their own, the manager gives them an offer, and the response is, “so I have to run traffic with my own money?” To the argument “but we pay for deposits,” the answer may be, “so what, I have to spend my hard-earned money too?”
There was a telling case with a webmaster from Bangladesh who wrote, “My life is over.” “Life is over” because he had blown $400 at a casino. That’s how it went. He had some poorly thought-out push traffic, fell for it himself, and then asked the whole team for money because he had “nothing to live on,” while he did not intend to tell his family about his irresponsibility. In personal messages and calls, he asked: “Give me money, please, sorry, I will return.” An affiliate’s life is anxious and unpredictable, in a word.
Do solo affiliates write this more often, or people who are also in teams?
In teams, thank God, there are no problems with money.
What about people without experience — how can they get into affiliate marketing at all? How can someone get a position as an affiliate manager, for example? Tell us how your journey began
As for me, I started roughly 2 years ago. Before that, I had no background in affiliate marketing at all: a bit of e-commerce, some superficial Facebook experience, testing “white” niches, nothing like that.
I joined an affiliate program with absolutely no experience in affiliate marketing. It was difficult at first because it was a new niche, new experience, all of that. I did not get into the company on my first interview, but, as they say, you have to keep knocking, and the door will open. Then I realized that you can make money in this niche, and the industry itself is developing rapidly, meaning you can grow quickly along with it.
The first month was spent, without exaggeration, continuously watching YouTube videos about affiliate marketing — that is how I quickly gained basic knowledge and partially caught up with my colleagues. I have no regrets. I managed to grow from junior to team lead during this time. There are a lot of nuances in this field, so you need to stay on top of things and keep learning — that is the only way to get results.
Did your professional expectations come true? What challenges do you encounter?
Here we need to insert the meme “but there was so much talk.” What annoys me most is when a webmaster comes in and says something like, “I lifted your affiliate marketing from its knees, give me a $300 rate for Ukraine, I have an $80 average check in Bangladesh on the first day.” It is a deadlock situation: you can negotiate the best offer for them, but such statements often turn out to be a fairy tale and an inadequate assessment of themselves and their results.
It is frustrating when a webmaster gets a rate higher than what the advertiser pays, and then it turns out the traffic is fraudulent — and you have to make a payout or compensation because it was a test cap. The same story happens with influencer traffic: you expect stellar results, huge average checks, and the moon from a blogger, but in reality you get five deposits of three dollars each.
Another unpleasant situation is related to compensation. The webmaster says, “I set up the targeting correctly, drove a thousand installs, and there are no deposits.” This most often happens in Tier-3 GEOs, and when you start doing the math — the cap was for 10 deposits, and for Brazil under those conditions there could realistically have been a maximum of 300–400 installs even with poor conversion, not a thousand. The logical question is: who asked you to run a thousand installs, and why didn’t you stop the traffic at 20–30 with no registrations at all?
Sometimes it also happens that a webmaster takes an offer without coordinating with the manager and starts running traffic — the traffic goes nowhere, and then complaints appear: “why do I have to ask permission for an offer, why aren’t all offers publicly available, why do I have to prove I deserve this offer?” Yes, we get things like that too.
We do not make offers publicly available. The reason is simple — control over caps and budgets. By restricting some offers, the affiliate program protects the partner from potentially wasting their budget on an unsuccessful GEO, and protects itself from cap overflows and subsequent payment issues caused by thousands of unapproved installs. So the right approach is to consult the manager first and launch afterward. No one forbids taking a particular offer; the manager simply helps choose a better approach, set everything up correctly, and connect support if necessary — it is much easier to do this with a manager than on your own. That is exactly why not all offers are freely available: our goal is to help partners get better results.
What qualities should a webmaster have for effective, profitable work and good results?
The list is not as long as it may seem at first glance. First, persistence, because results take time. Second, patience: it is needed when there are no intermediate results yet and while searching for successful approaches. Third, a high level of stress resistance.
Of course, ambition and the desire to “conquer” the market are great, but this drive should be backed by common sense, basic math, and foresight.
Trust in your affiliate manager is also important — confidence that they are offering genuinely profitable conditions and are interested in your success, as well as the ability to listen to their advice and truly hear them. And, of course, continuous development and the desire to improve together with your affiliate manager.
What communication approaches do you use when talking to media buyers? How can an affiliate motivate and support a partner?
The main thing is to build genuine, friendly communication, and the partner should be equally interested in being friends with the manager. An affiliate manager is not tech support like monobank or Glovo with standard template replies. Managers are always in touch and try to help solve any problem. Affiliate managers are happy to jump on calls and meetings, discuss not only work-related matters but also simply talk about life — and everyone has something interesting they want to share. Informality brings people closer.
A story from experience: a long time ago, there was a partner with whom the relationship became so warm that he even invited me to his daughter’s christening — despite the fact that we communicated exclusively by phone and video because we lived in different cities. It all came from a great connection, openness, and mutual respect.
The moral is simple: it is important to remember that there is another real person on the other side of the screen, with their own hobbies, news, and events in their life. Do not be shy about asking your managers about these things, finding out more about them and their lives. And when a genuine friendship develops with a manager, they definitely will not offer a low-quality offer — their conscience would not allow it.
A beginner took an offer without checking whether the advertiser accepts traffic from a specific GEO — and the traffic was not credited. Will there be compensation?
On the affiliate platform, all offers are divided by traffic source — separately for Facebook, UAC, PPC, etc. If a partner takes, for example, a Facebook link but runs traffic from another source without coordinating it with the manager, there will be no compensation, and that traffic will not be paid for.
To work with a specific traffic source, you need to notify the manager in advance — they will generate a separate link for that source, because the conditions (including rates and KPIs) may differ for different sources. You cannot use a link intended for Facebook to run push traffic.
What GEO would you recommend with a $1,000–1,500 budget?
With this budget, it is better not to go straight for the most expensive directions, but to start with Tier-2–3 GEOs — for example, consider Greece, Portugal, Turkey, or Kazakhstan. Overall, a budget of $1,000–1,500 is quite enough to get started.
Will there be compensation if you were given an offer that does not work?
An affiliate manager will not offer an offer that you simply cannot run traffic to — if a GEO was stopped a day or two ago, the manager will know about it and will not recommend it. If the problem occurred through the team’s fault — for example, an outdated GEO was provided by mistake — the partner will, of course, receive compensation. But if the partner independently took an offer that the manager did not recommend, unfortunately there will be no compensation.
Should you run traffic to a link or to apps: what are the differences, pros, and cons?
As for PWA: if the app is your own, you can run traffic to it, but the partner is responsible for conversion and the quality of the hook — this is their risk area. By the way, we have a detailed explanation of when and under what conditions you should use PWA and WebView. One Partners does not provide partners with its own PWA solutions, but we have something even cooler — iOS and Android apps developed in-house.
Apps from One Apps live for up to 30 days, have advanced anti-ban optimization, built-in push notifications, and a whole range of other advantages that are not so easy to find on the market. We help with integration and setup and also provide guarantees of up to 7 days. Contact your manager for details.
And, based on experience, PWA effectiveness is highly individual — this format works well for some and not for others, so guarantees cannot be given here. WebView may show better results.
Thanks for the conversation!
