Is there money in whitehat lead generation and why 200% ROI is not a panacea: an interview with Amin, co-owner of Inch Digital

Ruslan AM is an affiliate manager with six years of experience in CPA. During this time, he has worked with various verticals, from dating and sweepstakes to nutra and whitehat leadgen. He is currently developing the affiliate direction at WhoCPA, a direct nutra advertiser in LATAM and Asia. He runs a blog and channel called Ruslan AM — Everything About Affiliate Marketing, where he openly shares his experience and market cases.

AFFHUB is here, and we continue to share stories from market leaders with the community. Today, our partner Ruslan AM has prepared an interview with Amin, co-owner of Inch Digital. What is whitehat lead generation, is there a profit in it, and how to make money not only from gambling — read all about it in our new interview.

Amin’s story will feel familiar to many Ukrainian marketers today. Like thousands of us, he knows what it’s like to leave home because of war and start over in a new country. His path shows that it’s possible to keep building, even when life changes completely — as long as you move smart, not just fast. That’s exactly why I wanted to talk to him. Amin is open-minded, runs several very different businesses, and has a fresh perspective we can all learn from. He works in whitehat lead generation — a niche still new for many Ukrainian affiliates — and proves there’s life beyond the usual verticals like gambling and crypto. This is a chance to see what’s possible when you adapt, diversify, and aren’t afraid to try something new.

Q: Could you start by telling us a bit about your background and how your parents’ journey influenced your approach to life and business?

A: I was born and raised in the Netherlands. My parents were refugees from Lebanon in 1990, fleeing war. I’ve witnessed my father starting from scratch in a new country with a different language, culture, and no social connections, despite having good wealth in Lebanon. My mother also faced immense difficulty raising four kids without family support. This background instilled a strong sense of survival in me. I am eternally grateful to the warm and loving country of the Netherlands for giving us all the chances to make the best life out of it.

Q: Do you feel your cultural identity, being both Lebanese and Dutch, plays a role in your business approach?

A: Yes, absolutely. I believe it’s in the genes. Lebanese people are often born into doing business and being extroverts, and Dutch people are straightforward. This combination is mostly good, but sometimes being too direct can be a pitfall; I’m still learning to be more neutral.

Q: You’ve been involved in various digital ventures. Could you walk us through your early experiences in the affiliate marketing?

A: I’ve been working in the affiliate marketing for about four to five years. Initially, I was selling software to structural engineering companies but felt a strong desire to do more business for myself. I started with some online courses on ClickBank, set up my own ads, and bought some ad space on a website, but I got banned immediately. My very first campaign after ClickBank was for Keto, and I had no clue what I was doing, which was a good lesson.

Q: How did you pivot from that initial setback?

A: After getting banned, I called my childhood close friend who had six to seven years of experience in online performance marketing. He told me to stop what I was doing and start something with him. I teamed up with him and another friend, and we launched our network focusing on mobile app installs. In that phase, my role was mainly tech and integrations. After about six months, we started making some money, but the network model for apps was very tough back then and didn’t work out.

Q: What was the next step after the mobile app install network?

A: We switched to a lead generation network, which worked well for about a year, bringing in good money and connections. It was purely a profit decision. With app installs, you might need to generate thousands of installs for a small profit, whereas with lead generation, you could achieve similar profits with just a few hundred leads. However, we started facing issues with publishers sending fraud, leading most advertisers to pause working with us. This was a significant “burnout” moment for me around October/November 2023, as we were flagged for fraud after a period of huge profits. We were left with a choice: become an advertiser with our own offers or focus more on media buying.

Q: What did you learn from running a network?

A: From running a network, I learned crucial skills in sales, communication, and building relationships with advertisers.

Q: What do you wish someone had told you before you started your own affiliate network?

A: Don’t take it personally and be careful with your reputation. There’s a lot of fraud, and it’s a very difficult and possibly slowly aging business model. Make sure you protect yourself by getting paid quickly.

Q: Why do you think most small networks fail?

A: Focus. They tend to try almost everything that comes their way, which is normal because you need to test different directions. However, when money starts coming in, it’s best to follow the money instead of adding 10 more verticals. First focus, then scale, then scale 10x, and only then diversify.

Q: What’s the biggest mistake you made early on in affiliate marketing?

A: Not shifting to the media buying side earlier.

Q: When did you transition fully into media buying, and how did that scale?

A: My partners and I, having some money left, decided to take one more chance with a top advertiser. We found a potentially good publisher who was also in a tough spot financially, and we started running Facebook ads together. We quickly saw profits and scaled it up within two to three months to numbers we couldn’t believe. We decided to focus more on media buying and became closer business partners and friends. Back then, we were spending $50-100K a month, and a few years later, we reached levels of 7 figures a month spent, adding Facebook, Google, and other traffic sources.

Q: What was your first successful campaign that truly made a profit and showed you the potential for scale?

A: Our first profitable affiliate campaign was in the leadgen insurance space. In the second month, we made decent profit, received feedback for good quality, and realized there was room to scale unlimited. This was a real eye-opener for me, showing that we could go “unlimited”.

Q: What verticals are you currently focused on in media buying?

A: Right now, we work with leadgen, insurance (both lead forms and pay-per-calls), medicare, and debt. We are particularly bullish on insurance and medicare. We avoid home improvement because we’ve never succeeded with our traffic in that area, and our current “DNA” isn’t suited for it.

Q: What are some red flags you now see immediately when testing a new offer?

A: Low epc, low conversion rate, heavy funnel, no leads after spending 1.5-2x the CPA value, high cpc.

Q: When you hit seven figures in monthly spend, what changed operationally?

A: Mindset and organization. We started to automate our processes more and built a more solid infrastructure, such as the finance operation (very important to be strong in collections and analysis of results), tech operation, data analysis, media buying methods, etc. My partners and I also agreed on a specific framework in our weekly calls, quarterly meetings, and yearly meetups. A few people now work full-time on creatives. We have ad accounts and credit lines with most major traffic sources like Google and Facebook.

Q: How do you stay profitable when you’re spending seven figures a month?

A: Spent and revenue are vanity; profit is sanity. The most important thing is to focus on quality and margins. When there is a good balance, scaling is “easy.” But finding the winning creative, with the right account and a strong offer in the market, can sometimes take months of testing.

Q: How do you pick offers that are scalable and long-lasting?

A: Smelling through spytools, tasting through testing. We look for offers within spytools that are currently hot on the market. We also ask other media buyers what they are running. Even if nobody really shares, many media buyers will still tell you exactly what they are running because they know it’s generally not easy to make it work directly.

Q: What tools, tracking systems, or processes helped you scale media buying?

A:

• Spytools

• Redtrack

• AI tools

• Creative tools

Q: What kind of AI mediabuying tool you’ve built, how does it help?

A: Right now, many manual tasks are handled by a larger team, but part of media buying involves increasing budgets, killing assets, copying campaigns or assets, etc. If you have a tool with specific rules to handle these tasks, media buyers can focus more on quality and optimizing CR, EPC, lead quality, creatives, and messaging. Testing and scaling become much easier, and all the standard daily tasks are taken over by tools or AI.

Q: How do you keep the performance edge today? Still testing new traffic sources?

A: When there is margin and healthy feedback from clients, scale it slowly to the moon and never lose that momentum. Make sure to have ad accounts, profiles, credit lines or top-ups, and enough creatives in the pipeline.

Q: Do you prefer working directly with advertisers or through networks? Why?

A: In the past, we also liked networks because we could be more aggressive and still get paid weekly. Now we prefer working more directly because our margins are generally better and we have more cash flow, which usually means no issues with payment terms. Always fight for the best payment terms, as this will give you even more reason to scale that client. Use it as an argument to focus more on them.

Q: What percentage of your success came from strong relationships with advertisers versus just campaign skill?

A: Internally we call it TRD (the right deal). You can be the best at media buying, but if you don’t have the right deal in place, you are nowhere. Make sure to jump on weekly calls with clients, even if not much money is being made. Ask how they are feeling, how their partner is, what their dreams are, and truly care about what they feel and think. Be human 🙂 It works like a charm, and most of the time you get extras you don’t expect — higher PO or higher EPC, better buyers on the backend, faster payment terms, and sometimes even amazing gifts at the end of the year!

Q: What’s your approach to campaign testing? How much do you spend before killing or scaling?

A: We usually need $10–15K for one offer in one vertical. Scaling mostly happens when we see healthy margins and a winning creative during testing. When a creative shows promising results, we take it to the validation stage for a few days to see if it holds the same margins. If yes, we scale it slowly, and if the margins hold again, we scale aggressively (sometimes doubling budgets a few times on the same day). If not, we take a step back and retry. If it doesn’t hold margin, we kill it.

Q: Do you believe in cloning success (copy & scale) or building new angles from scratch?

A: Copy & scale works like a charm. Building new angles might not always work, but when it does, you’ll be the first one to enjoy the ripe fruits from it until another affiliate starts using it too. New angles give you the added advantage and margin of the first sprint.

Q: Beyond media buying, you’re also involved in a family restaurant. Could you tell us about Libabite?

A: Yes, we have a family restaurant called Libabite, serving Lebanese food. My mother faced a difficult time during COVID restrictions, like many others. My brother and I came up with a plan to start selling her delicious homemade food. We built a basic website, gathered products, and started delivering from home. Initially, we had only one order a week, which grew to two to three orders a week, then two to three orders a day. After three to four months, we were generating sometimes $1K revenue per day from homemade products. We realized its potential and decided to rent a physical space after a year of searching, starting our restaurant journey literally from scratch – no tables, chairs, or machines. One year ago, we might have had two to four people on a Saturday, but in recent months, we host 90-120 people on a Saturday, and we feel we can slowly grow more. The idea is to offer authentic, original Lebanese food, as if it’s from home, combined with a fine dining experience. We’re also focusing on advertising, finding a good formula with Google Ads for visitor numbers. We’re now one of the highest-scoring restaurants in town, with a 4.8 rating and almost 1000 reviews.

Q: How do you manage your time between performance marketing and running a physical restaurant, plus other ventures?

A: At the beginning, it was very hard. Now, the restaurant is largely in charge of managers, operating as an ongoing operation. My focus there is on optimizing processes, creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and scaling it. The restaurant is now self-sustaining and paying its bills, ready for the next level. That’s why more focus is now going into its marketing, including Google Ads, SEO, Google Business Profiles, new menus, Facebook ads, TikTok videos, and Instagram.

Additionally, I’m still involved in AR-tec, my engineering company with a friend. We focus on structural calculations for scaffolding, permanent structures, and drawings. We have six people and are developing an AI tool called “Vireos” for hiring structural engineers, and also developing nine apartments in Roermond. There’s a lot to do, and it comes with headaches, but we’re moving forward and growing.

Q: How important do you think diversification is for affiliate marketers today?

A: Important. But even more important is to find something scalable for longer than just a few hours — something more mid-to-long term. And when you think you want to diversify, first scale what you already have by 10x. For example, if you are running Medicare and doing 1K leads a day, try to add 3–4 more Medicare offers to scale it to 10K leads a day before you move into nutra or something else 

Q: If you were starting today with $5K, what would you do?

A: First, I’d thank Allah and approach everything with positivity and a smile. After that, I would speak with people who are making it work, ask them questions, and really apply the advice I get. Sometimes, if you feel like you have 100% of the pie, it’s worth giving a part of it away to someone with whom you can build something bigger. If you are strong in relationships and sales, offer this skill as value to the company while another partner takes care of media buying, finance, or product development.

Q: What’s your top advice for affiliates in 2025 who are struggling to get traction?

A: Not everything works, and you shouldn’t try literally everything. Before jumping into something, understand the EPC, the CR, the potential scale, and what the top 3 affiliates are sending in terms of daily leads. Learn from those answers, verify with your own investigation using spytools, and test smartly to see if you can make that offer work. Most importantly, maintain great relationships to get the best deal possible for your situation.

Q: A lot of affiliates in our space focus on nutra, gambling, or sweepstakes. What would you say are the main differences when running whitehat verticals like insurance or Medicare?

A: The difference is in messaging and creatives — they’re usually cleaner, and the offer itself is clearer for the client. The client knows exactly what they’re getting, how much they will pay, and what they will receive in return — which is security and insurance. 

Q: What’s your advice to affiliates who’ve only worked with aggressive funnels and greyhat offers and want to explore more compliant, long-term verticals?

A: The quick money doesn’t exist there. ROI might be 10-20%. Instead of aiming for 100–200% ROI, be satisfied with $1–2 profit per lead on a $10–15 CPA, and then optimize scaling to the next level. Be patient — when you get the chance to scale, it can become unlimited. Plus, you’re running something that adds at least a little value to the world. It’s not like building houses for people or curing diseases, but having security or insurance when something happens is important. Maybe karma will be on our side one day 🙂

Final words

I hope Amin’s journey inspires you to look wider at the affiliate world and beyond. Don’t limit yourself to what everyone else is running — explore new directions, learn how they work, and think long-term. Slow but steady growth can take you further than quick wins that burn out fast. Whether you’re starting from scratch or already running campaigns, remember his advice: protect your reputation, focus on what works, and keep building one step at a time.

We’re happy to connect with media buyers who are interested in learning more or even exploring potential collaboration in the future. They’re welcome to reach out to me at @AminGhossein