In this second part of our Champions of Performance Marketing interview with Stefan Muehlbauer, we explore his thoughts on affiliate networking events, data, AI, public speaking, and the evolving affiliate marketing landscape.
Stefan shares personal stories, from bringing his newborn daughter to a conference to overcoming stage fright at his first big speaking event. He also gives practical advice on networking, YouTube growth, and the importance of data-driven decision-making in affiliate marketing.
Whether you’re a media buyer, an affiliate manager, or just someone interested in the industry, there’s plenty of insight to take away from his experiences.
Here is the entire interview on Spotify to listen to it:
Q: What do people realize about data collection and AI today?
Stefan: Data is essential today… everybody’s trying to collect as much data as possible because they saw what ChatGPT can do with data. And now everybody tries to have an AI do something for them with data.
However, “the point is that not a lot of people understand how to digest it. It’s not just that you have to collect it. You also have to be able to transfer it in a way that people can do something with that. It has to be collected in the right way, and it has to be done in a way that the people are really able to read between the lines.
It’s a science. While “more and more tools will appear and more and more people will learn how to use the data,” making it accessible for roles like “every affiliate manager in every program,” proper data interpretation remains a crucial skill.
Q: How has your experience influenced your daughter’s involvement in the industry?
Stefan: She creates reels with her mom for children’s content. Kids naturally want to adapt to what their parents do. I believe it’s better she sees us being productive, whether it’s her mom making comedy or me helping people become better affiliate managers.
Being comfortable in front of a camera or on stage is valuable as long as you’re not making yourself an idiot. We never force her – she genuinely wants to participate in videos. It’s a positive business environment for her to grow up in.
Q: Did you experience stage fright when you first started speaking?
Stefan: Yes, on my first speech in the AffPal in Dubai, Kinza 360. The brand started after my friend Lars Black advised creating an online persona instead of Stefan Muebauer.
The stage was huge, the audience expected expertise, and most were from Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, with English as their second language. Being the opening speaker made me nervous. I tried getting a drink at 10:30, but Dubai doesn’t serve alcohol until 1 pm!
Once I started, the nervousness vanished. I prefer audiences at affiliate networking events where I know fewer people because it grows my brand. These diverse interactions lead to constructive discussions with different perspectives—every argument has value, even if we see things differently. This helps me give advice that’s better tailored to each person’s situation.
Q: How has your speaking career evolved?
Stefan: I’ve always been a performer – did theater and rapped. Speaking is now my passion. I’ve expanded beyond affiliate management to personal branding and HR.
I made a speech about my book. Now, I will speak about big data and AI. So it also goes in other fields that are a little bit outside of just this affiliate management topic, which is a really nice thing because, just with affiliate management, I would not get all the invites I have now. Traveling and visiting conferences and affiliate networking events are some of the best things I enjoy.
Q: How did you start your YouTube channels?
Stefan: The first one was for Masters in Cash when I was there.
With the marketing director leaving, I took the initiative to create exposure and educate people, especially about API use. We invited five API specialists to the podcast, then experts on email passing and maintaining Facebook dating accounts. It was about sharing knowledge without needing big marketing budgets—just a camera and microphone—initially, just me and my phone.
The AffPal channel started after the Kinza affiliate conference and my affiliate networking events when people wanted my speech recording. I created my own content and invited affiliate managers, business developers, program runners, and network operators to share educational content.
Q: How does creating YouTube content compare to speaking at conferences?
Stefan: Recording alone feels awkward, setting up my camera and saying, ‘Yo, what’s up, everybody?’ doesn’t feel as natural as being on stage or hosting a podcast. Most of my videos feature guests because I prefer interaction.
Solo videos are rare, but that might change since I have topics where finding relevant speakers is challenging.
Like my video about business cards – it’s an eight-minute piece about when to use them versus using Telegram. Finding a speaker just for business cards would be weird, so I did it myself. Later, I saw someone wrote a blog post with similar views, though they probably didn’t know my channel. When you’re long in the industry, people often share similar ideas about best practices.
Q: How do you grow your YouTube channels?
Stefan: I’m at 260 subscribers for AffPal, less for Masters in Cash, though Masters gets more views through their newsletter database. Growth comes mainly from guests sharing with their networks, our AffPal newsletter, and conference networking where I share QR codes. It’s not a professional scaling approach, but in our niche market, it’s successful.
Take Exoclick – after their appearance on Masters in Cash, they got new clients who’d never used them before, which is surprising given how established they are.
It’s already a gigantic success. Everybody works with Exoclick. After the podcast, new people wanted to work with Exoclick, so he started with them because they saw the podcast and were simply never using it. And it is Exoclick, what is…
It’s as familiar as discovering McDonald’s from a video and deciding to try it for the first time. While new networks with exclusive websites are one thing, even established platforms get new users through our channel. They discover major industry tools they weren’t using before, which happens regularly through our content and conference presence.
Even at conferences, sponsorship links can bring 10–15 new signups. For Sophia, just from announcing it, seven people came through my link.
Q: Have you tried paid promotion?
Stefan: I tried doing ads myself but lost my Google account. We might try an agency later with a few hundred euros to reach 1,000 subscribers, but organic growth might be better for our niche. Looking at other affiliate manager channels, they might have 10,000 views but with AI-generated comments. I prefer 200 genuine views over 10,000 fake ones.
Sponsors value authenticity over numbers; they’ll buy sponsorships regardless of viewer count if the content is genuine. Getting 10,000 genuine viewers would be great for charging more, but that requires organic growth to maintain quality.
Q: What’s your perspective on organic versus artificial growth for social media?
Stefan: Yeah, I tried it with my personal Instagram account. I was not buying followers, but I used tools to increase it by following and unfollowing people, and I scaled it super fast. Nobody of these people cared about my content afterwards and it brought the entire engagement down.
It’s absolutely not making any sense. It’s better to be organically relevant than to just have a number of followers that don’t bring you real value.
Q: What advice do you have for media buyers working with networks?
Stefan: For media buyers, visit affiliate networking events and meet your account managers there. The best campaigns we have, when we want to scale something or try more expensive traffic, we go to people we meet in person at affiliate networking events. When meeting in person, you speak more openly. Affiliates are more open, too, which helps the network consult you better—like when you honestly share your real payouts.
Sometimes you have to take risks. If you get 10 euros from your current advertiser and a new program offers five, don’t just say, ‘Bro, I need 10.’ Try to meet in the middle. You miss many chances if you’re not open to compromise. You might lose 2 euros or 2.50, but you could find something that converts two or three times better. The advertisers also commit by overpaying you initially. A deal is only good if it works for both sides in the long term.
Speaking with traffic sources is crucial, too. Personal connections help with non-compliant ads issues and get faster insights on campaigns. But most importantly, network with other affiliates. They usually share part of their secret sauce, never everything, but you learn a lot.
On the affiliate networking events you can make joint ventures: one guy has good account access, another has reasonable offers, another has established creatives. There are media buying teams with four or five hundred people, mostly in iGaming. Each person specializes in different areas, and together, they have power with advertisers and sources.
Q: Where can media buyers connect with other affiliates?
Stefan: It’s usually happening at the affiliate networking events. There are online groups – the Affiliate World Forum and a few others. You have Facebook groups, Telegram channels, everything. You can ask for introductions. For example, SEO affiliates are very connected and often introduced by programs and networks to exchange backlinks.
But at events, there’s usually something like affiliate meetups specifically for affiliates. The organizer takes care that it’s not overloaded with managers. If you’re going there, you usually find people—especially if you’re saying you’re an affiliate, everybody jumps on you.
You’ll make meaningful connections if you’re not the most introverted person. If you are the most introverted person and don’t want to speak to anybody, you better sit at home and do it yourself. Or you can speak on forums or groups if you’re introverted and don’t want face-to-face interaction.
Q: What’s your advice for optimizing campaigns at Masters in Cash?
Stefan: It’s important to speak with us. We will cut you if you have an excellent EPC on CPL campaigns, but our ROI is terrible. Always check how the campaign is going. You can never send traffic to 10 countries, five offers, or 10 different landing pages and assume everything is working. You really need your data in place and tracking like a CPV Lab.
Rely on both your data and what you get from us. Ask for updated landing pages and insights on what converts best for your traffic type. Newer offers usually convert better than older ones because they follow trends—but check how much traffic is already there and if it’s working for others. Don’t send everything to new offers without guarantees.
Match banners and creatives to landing pages. We often see affiliates using pre-landers with the same funnel questions we have – asking ‘do you like blonde girls, choppy girls, old girls?’ – then ending up at our funnel again. Have your pre-landers match our landing pages. If your pre-landers work better, run our signup pages directly. These guidelines work for many companies.
Q: What’s the biggest problem in the affiliate space?
Stefan: Lack of education. Education goes through everything, and the biggest problem is communication from all sides. It starts when people reach out without telling what they want—writing ‘hello, how are you’ on LinkedIn with stupid prefilled messages. When affiliates reach out saying, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ it’s nice to check, but people aren’t caring. Define what’s going on because we need to prioritize.
If someone we haven’t spoken to in a year with no traffic says ‘hello,’ and I have other things to do, they wait. But if they’d say, ‘I got this flat deal with 100,000 clicks to pass on,’ that’s different – though it might be the shittiest pop traffic, God knows from where. Those 100,000 clicks could be worth the same as 20 clicks from a tier-one market with email or review site traffic. This all needs to be cleared out. Communication is part of education.
And you find that, like, I didn’t want to ask that, but it came to me. After ChatGPT, you find that these questions are longer and more easier to understand or difficult to understand because I find it like they are not clear at all. Yeah, you said that the problem is communication, but you see that they use ChatGPT in their communication when they talk.
Q: How do auto-filled messages affect communication?
Stefan: I was not referring to ChatGPT; I mean, LinkedIn has these automatic messages when you connect, prefills like ‘good connecting with you, how are you?’ It’s making it too easy for people to be bad communicators. Before, when they had to type something, there was the chance they’d say, ‘Hey, I have traffic’ or ‘I want traffic’ or ‘I want to use your tracking tool – does it have these features?’ They had the chance to write directly.
Now they just click the suggestion and you get something that’s not helping you. We never had such a big problem with translations, even when people use ChatGPT to translate because they’re not native English speakers.
Q: What are your thoughts on data in affiliate marketing?
Stefan: It became, in the meantime, one of my favorite topics. Because I see how much data I can do compared to manual work. If you’re a great affiliate manager but don’t know any insights, you’re not as good as an average guy just presenting what is served to them on a silver plate. For an affiliate, it’s even more critical than for an affiliate manager.
An affiliate manager theoretically just looks in the statistics—it’s not even data. He sees, ‘Okay, this guy is sending; this guy is not sending,’ and makes an approach. But an affiliate can’t generate money just by sending traffic without looking at it or just looking if it generates sales or not. It’s not enough for them, even more important because most affiliates are paid on performance, and they are losing money.
A fascinating quote I got about 8 years ago from FB Queen – ‘you never lose money in media buying; you only buy data.’ It depends on how you use that data—if you don’t know how to use it, you’re just losing money.
Conclusion
Stefan Muehlbauer’s journey through affiliate marketing, public speaking, affiliate networking events, and content creation shows how adaptability and communication shape success in this industry. His perspective on data, networking, and organic growth highlights the importance of authenticity and strategic thinking.
You can contact Stefan at Stefan@ affpal.net or look for him on Instagram after @affpal.
As AI and data collection become more central to marketing, the ability to interpret and use information effectively will be a defining factor for those who thrive.
Whether through conferences, YouTube, or personal connections, Stefan’s advice remains clear: stay engaged, keep learning, attend affiliate networking events, and build meaningful relationships.
If you missed it, read the first part of Stefan Muehlbauer’s interview, see the whole interview on YouTube and listen to the podcast on Spotify.
And stay tuned for the next episode of Champions of Performance Marketing