Background & more

I started in performance marketing and gradually found my way into the affiliate world, where I've been ever since. At Selltoro, I lead the affiliate team - which means everything from building and managing partnerships with e-shops across European markets, to working with affiliate networks, overseeing CSS campaign compliance, and coordinating with our PPC team.

Selltoro is a Google CSS Publisher active across 20+ European countries, which means the work is never just one thing - every market has its own dynamics, its own networks, its own quirks. I like that about it.

Your progress in BusinessLeague

We're currently sitting at 5th place in the Companies category - though that's a moving target, we've competed at the Corporations level too and that's where we're aiming to get back. Our generated sales value has crossed €60,500, which we're happy about.

The strategy behind our progress is one we've refined over time: we work well with merchants of all sizes, but we've found a real sweet spot with small and mid-size e-shops. With larger merchants, CSS is often a crowded field - many publishers already in the mix, margins tighter, less room to make a real difference.

Knowing when a space is oversaturated is just as valuable as knowing when to push. With smaller merchants, we can genuinely shape their growth story, and that's where we tend to shine.

We follow BusinessLeague and enjoy the gamification aspect, but we try not to let it drive our decisions. Our north star is the actual value we're creating for 2Performant and its clients - BusinessLeague is a nice signal, not the strategy itself.

How would you describe BusinessLeague in one sentence?

A fun way to benchmark yourself against the market - as long as you don't let the leaderboard distract you from the actual business.

What's your favorite challenge in the platform and why?

Honestly, I appreciate the challenges that push us to activate new merchants rather than just optimize existing ones. Onboarding a new e-shop, getting the CSS feed live, and seeing the first conversions come in - that's the part of the work I find most rewarding. Any challenge that incentivizes that kind of growth aligns well with what we're already trying to do.

Talk about your work

CSS is a label that comes from Google, but what we actually do is broader: we run product advertising across search engines - Google Shopping primarily, but also Microsoft Ads - and we often operate our own price comparison websites on top of that. Think of us as a performance marketing partner for e-shops, not just a technical middleman.

The core of what we do is product advertising that delivers measurable results. We actively manage feeds, monitor campaign performance, and get to know the merchant's product mix. And because we combine this with an affiliate model - meaning we only earn when a sale happens - the incentives are completely aligned. The merchant pays for results, not just traffic.

What are some shops you have had good success with?

In Q1 2026 our top performers were librarie.net, vioi.ro, and makeupshop.ro. In Q4 2025 it was petmax.ro, laicashop.ro, and makeupshop.ro again - which is a nice sign of consistency.

Makeupshop.ro is actually a great example of what a sustainable partnership looks like. We've been working together since June 2024 - nearly two years - and over that period we've generated over €33,200 in sales and nearly 1,500 conversions.

What I like about this partnership is the stability. The conversion rate in Q1 2026 hit 5.14%, which is strong for a beauty retailer. It's not a flashy overnight success story - it's steady, compounding growth that both sides can plan around.

Q1 2026 - daily clicks vs. conversion rate % (makeupshop.ro via 2Performant)

■ Clicks    ■ Conversion rate %

Data source: 2Performant - Selltoro internal dashboard - Period: 01.06.2024 - 31.03.2026

What's the secret to a lucrative affiliate-shop partnership?

Alignment of expectations from day one. A lot of partnerships stall because the e-shop thinks 'we've added a publisher' and then waits. The ones that work are where there's mutual investment - the merchant keeps their feed clean, updates promotions, and communicates. We optimize, test, and stay proactive.

The other thing is patience: CSS affiliate isn't instant. There's a ramp-up period, and merchants who understand that tend to see much better long-term results.

How come more shops don't add affiliate marketing to their sales mix?

There are a few blockers. First, a lot of e-shops don't fully understand what affiliate is - they confuse it with influencer deals or think it only works for big brands. Second, the setup can feel complicated: choosing a network, setting commissions, managing publishers. And third, there's sometimes a trust issue - merchants worry about brand safety or commission disputes before they've even seen the results.

What needs to happen is better education, simpler onboarding, and more visible success stories from merchants their own size. That's part of why case studies like makeupshop.ro matter - it's not a household brand, it's a real mid-size shop that built something meaningful with the right partner.

If you could change just one thing about BusinessLeague, what would it be?

I'd love to see more visibility into the quality of partnerships, not just the volume. GMV is a great metric, but if the league also rewarded things like merchant retention, new publisher activation, or long-term partnership stability - that would better reflect what good publishing actually looks like, regardless of the channel. Right now there's a slight risk that chasing rankings incentivizes short-term volume over sustainable growth.

How do you leverage AI in your work and how do you see affiliate marketing in the next 5 years?

AI has been part of how we work almost from the start - we saw the potential early and decided to lean in rather than wait. For a mid-size company, that's actually an advantage: we move fast and we're not held back by legacy processes.

In practice, it shows up everywhere. Our campaigns are largely automated, and we've built our own approaches to working with AI and automation so our PPC team can focus on strategy rather than repetitive execution. AI helps us make sense of data faster and spot patterns we might otherwise miss. We've also built internal tools - vibecodeded the first versions ourselves, then handed them to our dev team to properly finish and secure - which has made a real difference in how we work day to day. It even joins our meetings so we can stay present in the conversation instead of taking notes.

And we're not just using AI as a productivity hack. We actually have AI team members now.

For affiliate marketing in the next five years: more consolidation, more automation, and performance-based models continuing to replace fixed placements. CSS publishing will keep growing as Google Shopping evolves. The publishers who rely on volume and manual work will struggle - the ones who build real expertise, real merchant relationships, and smart systems around them will win. The fundamentals won't change: results matter, trust matters, and knowing your verticals matters.