The Business of Affiliate Growth with Oleksandr Kulyk from Makeberry Affiliates

Show: Revenue Optimization with StatsDrone
Episode: The Business of Affiliate Growth with Oleksandr Kulyk from Makeberry Affiliates
Host: John Wright
Guest: Oleksandr Kulyk, VP of Affiliate & Business Development at Makeberry Affiliates
Published: June 29, 2026
Duration: 30:02
Audio: https://media.castplus.fm/wpy7pm98.mp3
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-business-of-affiliate-growth-with-oleksandr/id1700893670?i=1000774735746
RSS: https://feeds.castplus.fm/affiliatebi

Speaker labels are assigned from conversation context (host questions vs guest answers). Timestamps are `[MM:SS]` from the episode audio. Light ASR cleanup on brand names and a handful of obvious mishears (ChatGPT, Claude, GEO, Makeberry, Odys, NousViz, Affilka, StatsDrone). Everything else follows the recording.

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John Wright [00:09]

You're listening to Revenue Optimization, brought to you by NousViz, StatsDrone, and our friends at Affilka, which are producing some of the best affiliate program software you can get your hands on, and our friends at Odys iGaming, where if you want to rank anything, you got to talk to those guys. We are chatting with Oleksandr Kulyk, who's VP of Makeberry Affiliates and BizDev. So I want to ask what makes affiliate successful in 2026? It's a hot topic to get started with.

Oleksandr Kulyk [00:49]

Well, if you're talking about the affiliates, like in general, so basically what makes them like good is cheap traffic and good quality of traffic. So if you can achieve like the cost of your traffic as low as possible and the quality as high as possible, you're going to be at the top because everyone want to buy your traffic for the top prices. And as we can like see for the like maybe a couple of years, the price of traffic like raises like a lot, especially for the PPC. So yeah, if you can manage how to get cheap traffic with a high quality, you'll be at the top because there's lots of cheap traffic with a really bad quality and those kind of traffic, not really much of products want to get. So yeah, you're going to be good affiliate. You have to get as best traffic as you can for the lowest price. So you can get more profit.

John Wright [01:45]

But is that actually a big problem that affiliate programs face today is that you're being bombarded with this low quality traffic? Like is this constant?

Oleksandr Kulyk [01:53]

Yes, especially because of like lots of things like influencer AI, garbage games and stuff. So there's like lots of sources to get a really cheap traffic with a poor quality. Like those are not really like the players, they're just like people, just the users who was told to go to this link and do some stuff. And yeah.

John Wright [02:22]

Okay. And let's focus on the opposite, which is what have you seen in the last couple of years of the new affiliates? Like you said, like, you know, traffic is, for some people it's getting cheaper. I mean, you want to be that person, but what are you seeing more of coming through the signups? Like, are you seeing these new affiliates that are just basically using AI and they're becoming like nothing to something really quickly?

Oleksandr Kulyk [02:47]

Well, yeah, the one who understood how to use AI to make that traffic, they were on top at the very first time. For example, for the SEO, lots of people or teams started to use AI to build the websites, to write the content and stuff like that. So when you was the very first of those who understood how to achieve more, like how to make more websites, how to build them faster, stronger, more like that kind of website that Google and Bing and other companies are going to like. You got like really good pie of the whole, this good piece of pie. But right now it's vice versa because lots of big teams also using AI and they're building websites like, I don't know, maybe thousands per day. And that's kind of bad for the small teams. So it's like you're trying to fish and big companies are using nets and you are just using the stick so you still can like get a fish, but it's much harder for you.

John Wright [04:15]

But you must be seeing some of those affiliates breakthrough where they are catching their own big fish.

Oleksandr Kulyk [04:21]

Yep. Cause big companies are mostly using like the old, old, old strategies and they are not so they're not testing a lot. So if you're like a solo webmaster or you're like a very small team, you can invest more in testing. You can like think about something like out of box and big companies, they are analyzing too much and they're not so like, they're not so fast in starting something new because they need to understand it. They need to test something that they need to talk about, like with the like C-level, without their board, with their board and stuff like that. And only then that they can start building it. And if you are just a small team, you just ask for like a couple of hundred bucks or just a couple of bottles of beers and you just say, I'm going to do something and yeah.

John Wright [05:22]

Would you also say that there's some legacy affiliates that have been in the game for 10 years, that you're seeing that they're struggling, like they're losing their search traffic.

Oleksandr Kulyk [05:30]

Yes. Yes. Most of these affiliates are became like big companies and they're not about traffic, but about the brand development. So if they are casino, like if you are launching new casino, you want to work with those kinds of affiliates, just so everyone else could see you. So it's, it's not about to get traffic from them, but like you want to others sees you. Yeah. So old affiliates are now more like you're using them as influencers just to, to watch to know you.

John Wright [06:08]

So let's flip this around and say, you know, what are affiliates expecting from their operators and their affiliate programs today?

Oleksandr Kulyk [06:16]

Well, it's usually they want their traffic to convert as, as good as possible. So, so they could earn more from the, like the singles clicks and they want good retention because if you're working on the revenue share or hybrid, you want to like your players to play as much as possible and they won't get paid like without any delays and stuff like that. Oh, sorry. We don't have money right now, or we're going to pay you a bit later. So yeah, just a good conversion rate, good retention and payments, just like basic stuff. But unfortunately, again, like last year that there was like lots of scams and products, casinos, they were closed because of they were buying like very cheap traffic and they thought that they could figure it out, how to manage to get the money back. But they just were spending, spending, spending, and then like they just collapsing.

John Wright [07:24]

Yeah. That kind of leads to one of my other questions, which like what makes a good brand launch. So for example, in StatsDrone, we're usually adding around 50 affiliate programs per month, but we're closing around 30 and it's been like this for years. So our closed database is like this, it's just like a sea of like sunken ships everywhere. So I think you guys have launched a new brand. So what goes behind it beyond just another brand?

Oleksandr Kulyk [07:52]

Well, the most important part I believe is the strategy and understanding of how you will work with this kind of traffic. So if you're buying, for example, crash traffic, you have to understand that your particular product on this particular GEO will sort out how to earn more money than you spend for this traffic. And most of people, like unfortunately when they're launching, because you know, they just have some amount of money and they're just hoping that they do know how to spend this money correctly. But as we can see, they don't. Just some of them know, or they just got lucky that from this like low quality traffic, they got some, a few VIP users who just are in the, the money and they're just doing it. Yeah. So the main thing that you need before launching the product, before spending money is just understanding. And you have to be sure that in this GEO with this kind of traffic, you will get like some, you have a timeline of getting your investment back. And it all depends on the money you have for some, for some products that they want, the investment back, like in two months, for some they can like spend for a whole year, whole year, and only then they are willing to earn something. So it's all about the strategy and understanding.

John Wright [09:30]

Yeah. You were mentioning that, you know, affiliates want or kind of expects that you're going to deliver like a good ROI, a good player value, long players. What are some of the things that affiliates can get from affiliate programs? I don't know if you guys ever do this where like, is it possible that when you go into the affiliate backend, you've got your accounts, brands, campaigns, you've got postbacks, dynamic variables, maybe a player report, but is there ever like a report that you can share with like what games they play to kind of help them?

Oleksandr Kulyk [09:59]

Yes, of course. It's like, unfortunately, we cannot show it in the affiliate program interface, like lots of data, and we just kind of like spent lots of money for the servers and stuff. But yes, you can always ask about the top payments, methods, top games, top providers. Maybe also you can ask if your players are joining the tournaments and they use the bonuses or what kind of bonuses they use, like, do they like free spins or do they like extra money for the balance? So it's happening, you can ask and yeah, we can share it because the more information have our affiliates, the better quality traffic he can make or the more traffic he can provide us.

John Wright [10:53]

Yeah, that's amazing. With these reports, would they be kind of standardized, like if you gave it to one affiliate, would the next affiliate have a similar report just with their own data?

Oleksandr Kulyk [11:04]

Yeah, because we have our own analytics where we can see all this stuff and we can just copy paste or just share it with our, so yeah.

John Wright [11:15]

Okay, that's amazing. Because yeah, I mean, this stuff is super valuable. It helps them know which pages to make sure that they focus on, like, if they've got, you know, if they're a slot site, you know, they really want to know which ones are driving the value.

Oleksandr Kulyk [11:31]

Yeah, or for example, if you have like a website with the slots, and me as a product can tell you that most of the players from your sites playing not the regular slots, but live games, you can add those live games to your website and bring me more traffic and you can earn more. Yeah, so yeah, just like basic things about there. Yeah, okay, like lots of profit for both of us.

John Wright [11:59]

And just a small quick question. You said you have this as kind of like in-house analytics and data. It's just kind of like using tools like Tableau, Power BI.

Oleksandr Kulyk [12:08]

It's Tableau and Jira.

John Wright [12:11]

Okay, Jira?

Oleksandr Kulyk [12:12]

Yeah.

John Wright [12:13]

Okay, that's a different one. You don't always hear Jira with affiliate programs, but it's good to know. So what are the geotrends you're seeing? Like, you know, everyone talks about like, you know, I think Latin America has been on fire for quite some time, but where are you seeing the markets kind of opening up? Like what's hot right now?

Oleksandr Kulyk [12:33]

Well, for now I hear more about Africa. And I think that it will go soon to Asia and then back to Europe, because now it's like all cycling. It goes from Europe to Latin America. Now it's going to Africa, then it goes to Asia and it can come back to Europe. I think it will go like that. But I always have an answer for this question. So it's not about the hot markets, it's about the market you can work with, because the trends are like going up and down and you don't have to go with these trends, you have to just understand with what kind of market or with what country you can work and just stick to it. And that's all.

John Wright [13:21]

Okay, I've got a challenging question, but I feel like I'm asking one of the best people for it. What's the future of affiliate management? Like we're in this AI era and 2026 is agents. What does this look like?

Oleksandr Kulyk [13:34]

Well, I think that we're going to use more automatization with the AI, like we will spend less time, like human hours for some job, for some work to do, and we're going to use like bots, AI to analyze, to talk to people, for example, a few years ago, if we have some issue with the payment methods or some games, we have to wait to the product team to tell us to the affiliate team. And we as affiliates will tell to our affiliates. Right now we have like alerts and those alerts we can just send directly to our affiliates. So we don't have to go with this whole chain. And we have bots who understand, if I can say so, that bot understand in which chat is he right now, is it like a webmaster is like a team with the Facebook traffic, where they see what traffic the PPC traffic. And it's all depends on the issue on either affiliate side or product side or somewhere else side, he and the descend what he should tell in here, just for the team to stop traffic or to increase traffic or stuff like that. So we are like doing everything faster. And I think that lately, all our life became more faster because of the TikTok short videos and like crash games again, like we're starting to come in era with the fast life. And at some point it's bad, but in some point, like if we are delivering some information faster, it's better for us. So at some point it's like good, but at some point we just live faster, watch faster and we get exhausted entirely faster.

John Wright [15:36]

Or we expect more because more is possible, right? Yeah, that's pretty cool. What else are you working on with AI and automation, like either yourself or within the team? Because I mean, what you just mentioned is this is really insightful. I don't know many programs that are actually doing stuff like this.

Oleksandr Kulyk [15:54]

So mostly we were using AI with analytics, like from the very first days when ChatGPT, like when our company understood ChatGPT, you could analyze the like big bunch of data and tell us like, in short, like what was going on, then Claude, and like Claude right now, I think it's one of the best tools you can use for like coding stuff. So we are making, as I already mentioned, bots for the affiliate team, for the analytics team, for the in-house buying team. So it's all mostly with the analytics. Then also we started to do like assistance for the buyer team, for the affiliate team also. So affiliate manager don't have to check every single partner affiliate if he has started working with us, like if we had a deal and if he started to like, getting us delivering traffic on that. If there is some clicks on that, if he has a registration, if he has first deposit, if those like deposit good or like only one timers and all these data are just sent into affiliate manager like in Slack each day. So he can analyze each of his partner like faster. And he knows whom he had to write first, whom he had to ping and whom he had just to tell like, well done, you have like a good good quality of users and if it's possible, just get a small. Yeah.

John Wright [17:42]

No, that's amazing. Do you get affiliates asking you guys for help?

Oleksandr Kulyk [17:46]

Yeah, a lot cause again, they want to get insights from us. For example, if some SEO affiliates will get information about our new brand, they can already use that to start building and like be building the websites with our brand and they could get these like branded traffic, the very first one. So some of the insights we can share with our affiliates and some, potentially not. Yeah.

John Wright [18:18]

I got a quick question because it's like I used to be an affiliate and I'd always get most affiliate managers, like we had a website and it's all about casino bonuses, but we had like everyone else, a top 10 list on the homepage and they would always ask for the number one spot. They wouldn't care about any of our other traffic channels. Our number one channel was newsletter. Our number two and number three were our free spins and no deposit page just happened to be what we had. Do you guys ever look at affiliate site holistically and say, hey, we think that there's more value in the long tail keywords in the blog posts. I just feel like affiliate managers aren't asking for these things. What, what's your take?

Oleksandr Kulyk [19:00]

Well, it's, it's all depends on the affiliate cause sometimes they just don't need those kinds of, uh, advices cause they kind of like, hold on, I know what am I doing? I don't need your advices. I'm just doing this stuff and I know that it's going to work. And some of them, yeah, for, for those who's asking, we always get some insights and our point of view, cause I am personally in lots of chats with our partners. And if I see some, something that they are missing, like either our affiliate manager or the affiliate, personally, I can tell them that they can, uh, make some, I don't know, like, uh, upgrades, uh, those upgrades could get either more traffic or those traffic could be with a better quality. So it's all depends on the other party. If they're willing to accept your advices and if they're willing to talk to you, we are always can share some data, some, I don't know, experience and stuff.

John Wright [20:06]

Um, so we're, we're talking about AI and how it's making you guys better and faster. But do you think that the relationship is never going to disappear?

Oleksandr Kulyk [20:15]

That's going to be, it's going to be one of the most important parts of any affiliate program cause in our business, you always want to know the person you're talking to, especially, uh, offline cause in online is going to be like behind my avatar could be like some random, random guy. And he could just tell your brother, just send me the traffic. I'm going to pay you. I'm going to pay you. Just send me more than bump. And he just disappearing. So yeah, I think that in our business, especially you want to know your like partner, uh, in person, you always want to like get a beer with them, uh, just talk about life, about the like future and stuff, about some issues from the affiliate side from the like, uh, product side and stuff like that.

John Wright [21:09]

No, cool. Um, two more questions I've got. Uh, one of them is like, I think, uh, I've gotten a friend who's an affiliate manager and he's telling me that most of the affiliate SEO contacts are like, they're coming at them with like, Hey, if you want to get listed, do you need a listing fee you want to get placement? You got a flat fee. Um, is this common and is this also a big problem where, uh, most of the deals that I've actually had to review personally, where it's like, I just go to Ahrefs and I'm like, bro, there's no traffic behind these sites. Or if there is traffic, it's manipulated. It's not the market you think it is. Um, how bad is it?

Oleksandr Kulyk [21:46]

Uh, unfortunately this kind of issue is like for a really long time, but lately, yeah, uh, we decided that we are not going to pay, uh, fixed fees for the ratings, so we are going to start with the work in the affiliate just on a regular basis inside the CPA or hybrid or right, revenue share. After we can see at least some amount of traffic, not from the top spots, but later on, maybe two five, 10 or top 10 or just some other random places. So if we can like feel this traffic, uh, can, can see how to do the play, what games do to the flight, how much they're depositing, uh, how often they re re re returning and only then we can talk about top one spots. And even there we had a case, uh, we had a partner, I believe we were in top five spots, top five spot, and we got like pretty decent amount of traffic, it was not bad quality. And we decided to get more and asked him about top one. Uh, he said that we have to pay a fixed amount for top one. We paid it. And then, um, at some point, I don't know, it's either was he's, um, manipulating with the Google, with the, um, with some stuff, uh, from the top one position, we got lots of one timers, like players who just, uh, get the smallest deposit, not playing, just doing nothing and just disappearing. So yeah, sometimes top one is not giving you the best traffic or more traffic, it's just giving you just like fake, um, fake fake users. And you're going to like be disappointing and yeah.

John Wright [23:41]

You're giving me an idea. So I wrote down a note and I'll share with you after. Um, I wanted to ask, uh, so that is one way to, to kill a deal. But what are some of the mistakes that kills deals when you're dealing with affiliates?

Oleksandr Kulyk [23:55]

Mistakes. I don't know. Um, well, yeah, we are all humans and we can all make me mistakes. Like I think that most common mistakes is when affiliate manager is just, uh, telling you that you will have no TPI or you will have like a big rates, but he hasn't approved it with his team lead or with the head of affiliates. And this is like the most common mistake from this side and from the side of affiliates, I think that when we are paying for something and affiliates wanted or just telling us that he will make a post or just put us a top one like next day, but some of his team may be like sick or forget or something like that. And they're not giving us that top position or something could happen with him, like, I don't know, and those like couple of days when he's ignoring us and we already paid and those like, it's not a mean it's, I couldn't say that it is a mistake, but it's like maybe miscommunication stuff like that, but those kind of stuff also like a deal breaker cause, uh, the affiliate manager cannot trust you anymore cause you already paid and you just started to ignore him. So yeah.

John Wright [25:19]

And I also think on the affiliate side, it's, uh, there are now tools that can automate some of the stuff like I've already built these where we don't run affiliate business anymore, but I built a couple affiliate sites just for the hell of it. And I'm like, it's so easy for me to create like this full interview set up, give it to you as a link and you can add the pictures, you can do everything and all I need to do is approve. Yeah. So it's never been easier. Yeah.

Oleksandr Kulyk [25:44]

And then, and also we were talking about AI and we had mentioned that with AI, everything became faster and all also hacking became faster cause there's lots of website that been hacked or, uh, even I believe some of the crypto casinos was, yeah, I couldn't tell that they were hacked, but, uh, AI was talking to the, uh, support, uh, which was also AI agent and at some point that support gave like lots of money on the balance and the guy just withdrew it. And I believe it's like a big hole in this particular crypto casino that the support could add, um, like real money on the balance or these balance could be withdrawable. But anyway, like with AI and all this stuff, everything became faster and easier, not only for the good way, but for the like black way also.

John Wright [26:52]

I want to ask about helping affiliates be better with their security. Have you ever seen situations where affiliates have other affiliate links that are on their site, but they don't own them like they've been hacked? How big of a problem is that today?

Oleksandr Kulyk [27:08]

Oh, I haven't seen it so often lately. We've had a few cases in the end of previous year when affiliate was hacked, uh, in several affiliate programs and they were trying to withdraw all his earnings from, uh, like some random wallets. Uh, so from this side, and if you're talking about the websites, the most common thing is when the hackers hacking, um, widgets in Google Chrome and stuff in those widgets could, um, like change the, I don't know how to say it's like, is it changing the cookie? Yeah. So they change in the cookie or they, they change in the last link the users can go. Yeah.

John Wright [28:06]

Classic cookie stuffing.

Oleksandr Kulyk [28:07]

Yeah. That's a bad point. Yeah.

John Wright [28:11]

All right. Um, so we're probably going to see you at iGB London, uh, then there's ICE as well for the two main iGB events. Um, what do you expect from these shows? And, um, like, what is, what does your day look like? Like, is it like nonstop back to back meetings? Uh, how do you meet affiliates? Um, what does it look like?

Oleksandr Kulyk [28:29]

Well, uh, since right, right, right now I'm on the VP position, so I'm not meeting so much affiliates. Uh, I've got like a just a few meetings, I believe. And mostly it's interviews and podcasts. So right, right now, most of my conference is like, I'm meeting through a few, uh, for, uh, friends like and all the affiliates, uh, a few new affiliates and the rest of the day, I'm just giving the interviews, podcasts, and just talking to, to media that is like the regular day.

John Wright [29:03]

But busy, no doubt. Yeah. Um, Oleksandr, thank you for doing this. I want to pass it back to you to ask how can people get a hold of you? And, um, one last, uh, uh, plug for your program.

Oleksandr Kulyk [29:16]

So they could just Google Makeberry Affiliates and, uh, my contacts are on the website. Uh, there's also like a contacts of the affiliate managers, business managers, team leads and all other stuff.

John Wright [29:31]

Um, and what was the second? Oh, it's just like, you know, how can they get a hold of you? But I'm, I'm also not going to forget the notes where you said you've got a, some reports of like people can get like the games they've played.

Oleksandr Kulyk [29:44]

Um, they don't have to talk to me so they can ask the affiliate manager or the contact they get. It's either a sales manager or affiliate managers that they can ask about all the stuff, all data, and we could share it with a pleasure.

John Wright [29:57]

That is awesome. Thank you so much for doing this.

Oleksandr Kulyk [30:00]

Thank you.