MY PATH FROM 0. How the Team Was Built

Over the past 2 years, I have personally conducted more than 500 interviews, and I still can never be 100% sure if the candidate in front of me is the right fit.

When we first started building the team, there were practically no candidates with experience in Search, so we had to sell the idea and highlight the positive aspects of our field. Of course, the conversion from a prospect to an "employee" was high, but very quickly the media buyer's rose-colored glasses would come off, revealing the "expectation vs. reality."

First of all, a major problem was that we ourselves did not have an exact formula to follow to achieve good results. Yes, we were already making money, but this was largely either a coincidence or just a few offers that were profitable. However, we lacked an understanding of how to find and test new bundles.

We often gave advice based not on practice but on our guesses, which of course usually led to negative results and only confused the buyer.

Another issue was that we couldn’t pinpoint exactly where a person was making mistakes and where they were underperforming. There were many questions to which we had no answers, such as:

1. How many creatives to test to determine if a category can be profitable.
2. How much budget to allocate to make a decision.
3. How long to let a campaign run for optimization and whether it's worth it.
4. Why RPC drops and how to deal with it.
5. How much volume to allocate to a domain.
6. How to remove keywords that Google override (usually they have lower RPC).
7. Where to find those "top" keywords.
8. What criteria to use when selecting an offer to test.

Naturally, hoping to bring someone to success with such a list of variables was very presumptuous.

I’d say maybe 1% of candidates are willing to seek answers to these questions, test, delve deep, and try to understand the field. Usually, 99% of people expect easy money and give up within the first week or two.

Personally, I don’t run ads and have experience only as an "observer," so I couldn’t offer any valuable advice.

But, thank God, I have a partner who is directly involved in running ads, and together we found answers to these questions.

I can say with confidence that without such a person, our team would never be where it is, and most likely it wouldn’t exist at all.

I was very lucky with my partner because it’s crucial to have someone who gives you real feedback and a clear picture, who will test and find solutions when everyone says making money is impossible.

Very often, an employee would say, "I tested it, but it’s impossible to turn a profit," and my partner would take over the test, turn a profit, and show how it works.

When we started, there were 6 of us, 5 of whom were losing at -90% ROI and said Search was dead, but he turned his offers into +50% ROI in the first month of work.

Honestly, in 2 years I haven’t met people as motivated, who can be both good "managers" and "media buyers."

So far, we haven't had people who came in and showed results on their own. There are guys with experience in the field, but we still had to hone their skills and integrate our strategies into their work to get the desired result. And 90% are people completely trained from scratch, through trial and mistakes.

We could tell the same information to 20 people, but only 1 person would turn a profit. Everyone wants to make money, but few are willing to work.

The most common problems with buyers I would highlight are:

1. Expecting quick results (in practice, if a person has no experience, they won’t turn a noticeable profit earlier than 2 months). And that’s assuming they are putting in 100% effort and listening to our advice.
2. Lack of experience/willingness to create creatives (and you need a lot of them). Our buyer makes the creatives themselves or at least modifies found ones until they turn a profit. Then we bring in a creative specialist.
3. Fixation on one offer. Many try to run an offer until it burns out, not testing new bundles in parallel. As a result, the angle dies, and only then does the buyer start testing, thus generating losses until they find a working approach.
4. Burnout. Many are not satisfied with such dynamism, and they move to more understandable fields.
5. Lack of creativity. In our business, "fresh ideas" are worth their weight in gold. Running an offer based on a spy is unlikely to yield the desired result.

Of course, now we are much better at choosing employees, have a clear understanding of the launch and testing strategies, and can often tell within the first week if a person will be successful or not.

Our business is very tough, strategies change almost every month, but that’s the thrill of it.

I wish everyone to find their "partner" with whom you can build a progressive team and grow month by month, gaining valuable experience! And to media buyers, I wish you endurance — it will only get harder!

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