How to make the most of affiliate communities - ft Manu Cinca (5)
How to make the most of affiliate communities - ft Manu Cinca
Last week we hosted Manu Cinca (a.k.a. @manu_adefy), the man behind the WHAT THE AFF newsletter, at our HQ. As an experienced affiliate and an expert in building communities, Manu agreed to share his knowledge with fellow STMers. In the interview below, you will learn about the most efficient communication channels for affiliates, find out why it's important to share stuff (and what kind of konwledge you should keep to yourself), get to know the best way to approach industry events and much more. Hopefully this piece of content helps you expand your community activities in the right way and, as a result, brings you good business opportunities. Enjoy!
Don't feel like reading? Listen to the podcast: https://zeropark.com/blog/manu-cinca...ities-podcast/
Zeropark: With the constant relevance of WHAT THE AFF, how did you get to the position of a pillar of the affiliate marketing community?
Manu: It’s not a very short story, but I’ll try to summarize it a little bit. At the beginning of 2018, so over a year now, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Do I wanna go back to running campaigns or do something else. I had a safe enough situation so I could risk building my own product. And such was my decision.
I tried several things with my team in Vienna, but nothing really worked out until we ended up testing this newsletter. I’ve found a business newsletter that provided really good content and this was something I’d want to read. And I looked if there was something like this for marketing, affiliate marketing, something more relevant to what I was doing.
There was nothing like it, so the decision was to see if we can make it work, because it seemed pretty cool and looked like it could grow. And that’s essentially how we started. Exactly a year ago.
Zeropark: So you saw a gap there, you saw someone else doing it, and wondered why is nobody doing it here?
Manu: Yeah, the thing is I asked a few of my closest friends and the best contacts in the industry, and I was like, hey, can you check out this email I’m about to send, and give me feedback on it? We had a few important iterations from the beginning. And that’s how the feedback really made it a thing that really took off from the beginning.
Zeropark: Did go through several iterations after you started?
Manu: Yeah, the very first one I sent out to people even had a different logo, a bit different color scheme. We still use blue mostly, but it was a different shade of blue, I think a worse one, so we changed that. The logo changed the most, cause right now, I’d say we have a pretty fun character that’s usable in a lot of situations. Before that, we just had some letters. It was very impersonal.
So those were the major changes through the feedback phase. The content and the voice is the one thing that people said I got right from the beginning. I guess it helped I was in the industry already. I was doing it like I would write it to myself.
Zeropark: So overall, how big is the importance of community in the affiliate marketing space, and how can communities impact the trends?
Manu: In terms of communities, I started affiliate marketing in the community. I started off from the STM Forum, and then, in general, the thing that moved things forward was always a few people working together to figure things out. So smaller communities - “Masterminds” - work together to figure things out, while the bigger communities, like the STM, provide general tutorials and guidance, and not as many specifics.
When you’re an affiliate, and you’re in front of a screen, you’re pretty much alone. So whenever you have a community, some people struggling with the same issues, that helps. And especially in affiliate marketing, where it’s difficult to explain it to somebody that’s not an affiliate. That’s when community comes into play to make you feel less alone in this space.
Zeropark: You mentioned the “mastermind” courses. I remember that was 3-4 years ago, when the industry was smaller, do you still see those communities within communities exist or has it evolved to something of a bigger scale?
Manu: I think they exist but they are even more restrictive in terms of who can join. Affiliate marketing in general is getting a little bit more difficult these days and people who have it figured out don’t want to share with everyone as much as they did when it looked like affiliate marketing was growing and everyone could benefit from sharing knowledge.
Now there’s a bit more competition, they’re sharing less, but those communities still exist and help each other quite a bit.
Zeropark: So it’s still very important to make friends within the community.
Manu: For sure. You don’t get invited to any sort of “masterminds”, Skype groups, Slack groups, Facebook groups, whatever circle of people who know what they’re doing, without them knowing you personally.
You could be good at business but you also have to be compatible in terms of personality. It’s almost like a small company. It’s not exactly as formal, but you do see what each other does to a big extent, so you need to be trusted, someone needs to vouch for you, and they need to know you personally, more than just like “oh, he’s doing great on Facebook” and that’s it.
Zeropark: So it’s like a group of freelancers without a CEO.
Manu: (laughs) Kind of! But they have a very clear alignment, so they know what they need to work on, what the priorities are, and they don’t need a CEO to explain the vision.
Zeropark: You’ve mentioned a few types of communities, like forums, Facebook groups, email and so on. What do you think is the most important channel of communication for affiliates?
Manu: When it comes to public communication, probably Facebook is the most common. A lot of affiliates are in Facebook groups, they use their Facebook walls to talk about affiliate marketing to each other.
When it comes to private channels, I know there’s more. There’s Telegram, which I don’t like that much; Skype is always around, but what I think is a really good in-between is Slack. I like it quite a bit, and I think a lot of companies use it for internal communication, but there’s a free plan available and it works very well.
Zeropark: What seems to work pretty well are affiliate memes. Lots of jokes about different networks. It’s eye-opening really. Memes are the window to the soul these days.
Manu: Yeah. It gives you an idea of the mindset of the community because only affiliates get them. If you posted them on 9gag or something similar, everyone would respond “I don’t get it”.
Zeropark: When it comes to social media, is it important to follow the tools you use on a daily basis or is there greater value in following groups of affiliates?
Manu: For sure it’s more about the interactions between people in the groups. Even on Twitter, which isn’t a group, people can interact and jump into different conversations. What a lot of companies in the affiliate marketing space do is present themselves as this brand and talk as one company rather than talking as someone in the industry. Having a face, even if it is someone who isn’t an affiliate, helps become part of the community and understand affiliates. People aren’t excluded from the affiliate community because they aren’t affiliates.
That’s totally different from the companies who are just pushing information out there and you can’t really interact with them. And there are lots of ways you can follow that information like email or social media. Most companies are much more interesting inside the communities, but their outside social media isn’t worth following. However, it is something that can help them get discovered by future affiliates.
Zeropark: So the more personal and attached you are to the industry, the better you’ll do in these groups?
Manu: Exactly, You have to learn the lingo, what people care about, the dynamics in the industry, Which really means understanding the different players involved, including specific companies, traffic sources, affiliates, affiliate networks, payment gateways, and more. That impacts how you interact, so you know not to make fun of someone now or kick them when they’re down.
Zeropark: Are there any groups you would recommend people follow on Facebook?
Manu: On Facebook, not really. If there was, then we probably wouldn’t have our newsletter. If there was one group that was valuable like that on a daily basis then we wouldn’t need to browse through these different groups and find the most relevant news. So if you are interested in finding a Facebook group, just sign up and check out some of the ones we feature and if you don’t like them, leave.
Zeropark: So affiliates can use your newsletter as a way to get into the community?
Manu: Exactly. While we report news on topics like the latest developments with Facebook that you would see in the mainstream media, the real value we offer is giving affiliates what is relevant to them and showing, what we believe, impacts the industry. And so far I haven’t found a Facebook group which offered everything you need.
Zeropark: That’s why you’re such an important part of the industry because you link all this stuff together.
Manu: That’s a good summary.
Zeropark: Changing from Facebook to forums for a moment. Is it worth paying a premium fee to join a forum?
Manu: I think it is. STM is still the best one overall. There are two clear benefits. They have specific tutorials for you to follow along with which are great for getting started and can really help you figure things out. They are written in a way where you will get the basics right.
Plus, because people have paid, no one is going around trolling as they don’t want to risk getting banned which means everyone is much more focused on being productive. These are the same people you might meet at a conference and in fact, I can’t remember the last time I had my first interaction in person. Instead, we’ve always exchanged messages in advance.
Zeropark: Do you find it beneficial to share knowledge with other community members? Doesn’t it harm your own affiliate business?
Manu: It depends on what you do and what you think you have to your advantage. So, for example, if you’ve discovered a loophole that once everyone finds it, you lose your advantage, you probably don’t want to share that. If it’s something that isn’t hard to execute on, but it’s very hard to find, you don’t want to share that.
On the other hand, if you have something that’s hard to execute but is easy to find (in fact even if it’s not easy to find) you probably want to share it because you know that if you help them one time, they’ll help you back sometime when you’re struggling.
So the difficulty of execution is the main factor in whether to share something or not.
Zeropark: So talking about that comradery, one newbie was sharing his secrets on AffLift and someone warned him not to share too much or give away all his secrets.
Manu: That’s interesting because when I started out, I shared everything initially. But when things really started working, I started to share a bit less, especially the things which are a little harder to work out. So instead of doing follow-alongs where I revealed everything I was doing, I moved to commenting on specific threads. That’s a pretty common trend.
When you start out, share everything and then, if that works out great, share a little less next time. But if it doesn’t work out, then people will correct you as you go along. So the risk is that you might share a little too much, but if you don’t share then no one will be able to tell you where you’re going wrong.
Zeropark: Speaking about follow-alongs, how important are they for the community?
Manu: They’re huge because they are the most up to date case studies, because it’s all happening in the last couple of days and you can see what changes are working right now.
Zeropark: So do you think this kind of content is most useful for affiliates?
Manu: Follow-alongs are really great for affiliates, but if you’re a little more advanced and looking to scale, then content about organizing a team, automating certain things and generally doing more with less time is also really useful. Then there’s content which is traffic specific, content such as something about the latest update to Facebook and how it affects certain types of campaigns like, the quality score change, new bid types, and campaign budget optimization changes. That content isn’t really a follow-along but more like a test of new features on a platform.
Zeropark: What about webinars? Have you joined or even run any?
Manu: I’ve joined a few and they’re usually hit or miss. Too many webinars are just part of a sales funnel using the Russel Brunson framework: give value (whatever that means) for 30 minutes, and then sell for the rest of the time. But for marketers who are used to this sort of thing, it’s not that useful. It’s like watching those TV shopping channels. It’s just a product pitch really and I don’t really value webinars like that.
You know people like Tai Lopez use stuff like that, so if you want to be like him and copy that stuff, it’s probably worth watching, but I think there are better uses of your time if you are interested in his products.
But sometimes there are webinars by traffic sources and they can be really useful. For example, Facebook does their live Q and A every quarter and that’s usually useful and that’s a little bit different. So if it’s something that’s relevant for you, that’s worth joining.
Zeropark: We offer on-boarding webinars for people who’ve never used the platform before. What do you think about that?
Manu: I think onboarding is one of the best uses of a webinar, especially if you can get a recording afterwards and follow along again.
Another good type of webinar that traffic sources offer are campaign walkthroughs which can be quite similar to on-boarding webinars.
Zeropark: Moving on a bit, What do you think about affiliate events? How important is it for beginners to attend those events, especially as they aren’t always cheap.
Manu: If you can afford them, and by that I mean it won’t put any financial pressure on you or affect how much money you can put on campaigns, then usually they are worth it. But you have to go there with a plan. I always set a few goals before a conference, who do I want to meet, how do I want to meet them, which speeches do I want to attend and have some sort of schedule which I can work from.
But I know a lot of people who get value from just attending the after parties. Personally, I’m a “work during the day, rest at night” type of person but either way, come with a goal in mind and make sure you get value out of it.
Zeropark: As you become more experienced in affiliate marketing, does the value of these events increase or decrease?
Manu: It depends what you’re doing specifically. When you’re more experienced, you find useful tips less often, but when you do find them, they are often more valuable. So as a newbie, you will get bombarded by lots of new information that you can apply, maybe over 10 tips you can apply from one trip. But if you’re someone more advanced, you can work out what the state of the industry is and make a prediction about what direction you should move in. For example, you might move into e-commerce before a rush occurs and that’s invaluable.
It’s tough to predict and may not happen in a single event, so you have to be careful and choose which events to go, to make sure you maximize your ROI out of them.
Zeropark: Do you see value in just being present at these events? Shaking hands and so on?
Manu: Yeah, that’s how you can get into these closed groups. There’s a lot of shady stuff going online, so if people don’t meet you in person, then it can be very hard to do business.
Zeropark: That covers everything we wanted to talk about, so thank you Manu for this great talk.
Manu: Sure, no problem!
Great interview with some solid insights, thanks for posting it guys 
Do you also have it in video format somewhere?
Thanks @matuloo! No video, unfortunately, but we'll be publishing it as a podcast soon.
Originally Posted by matuloo
Do you also have it in video format somewhere?If you missed the interview or just don't feel like reading - here's the audio from our conversation with @manu_adefy: https://zeropark.com/blog/manu-cinca...ities-podcast/
Have a good one!
Bart
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