Background & more

I started out as an e-commerce entrepreneur — I had my own stores, sold online, and had to bring in customers. Simple enough.

My first ads were made without really knowing what I was doing. It was like billiards: you buy a token first, then you learn to play. I put money in, lost some, understood something. Put more in, understood more. Quality came from quantity, not the other way around.

Performance marketing came later — after I understood that paid advertising isn't an expense, it's a tool you can calculate. And I discovered affiliate marketing through Lucian, my agency partner. He was already deep in that space on 2Performant, and through him my perspective opened up: you can do marketing at scale, not just for your own store.

I didn't read marketing books before I started. My usual schedule looked something like this: 4 to 7 AM — ads. 8 to 1 PM — dealing with inventory. 2 to 5 PM — parcels. 5 PM until late at night — ads again. Then sleep. Repeat. Groundhog Day 😄

The advantage of those years, beyond the skills I gained, is that I've walked in the shoes of the clients I work with today at the agency. I know what they go through, what they feel, why they make the decisions they make. I understand them. And that's something you can't learn in any course.

How would you describe BusinessLeague in a single sentence?

BusinessLeague.com is the only place where performance marketing becomes a sport — with real rankings, prizes, and adrenaline — and where every sale counts twice: for the advertiser and for the affiliate.

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

Target Strike — because it's about how well you calibrate your campaigns for a specific store. It's not chance. It's math.

Which stores do you work with best on the platform, and what are the ingredients of that success?

My best partnership on the platform is with the stores in the Otter group.

The recipe? A partner who understands that an affiliate's motivation translates directly into how much and how consistently they work on that account. Fair commission, updated feed, fast approvals. When you feel treated like a real partner, you work differently. You give more. You get more involved. And in the end, you earn more.

Perhaps other advertisers reading this will ask themselves the right question: why do some affiliates send more traffic to certain stores and less to others? The answer is simpler than they'd like to believe.

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

I think the greatest value an experienced affiliate can bring to an advertiser isn't immediately visible — it's built over time, with patience, within an ecosystem that works for everyone.

When that ecosystem works well, everyone wins: the advertiser grows, the affiliate earns, the network strengthens. When someone decides to cut corners and take the game off the field — in either direction — they're not cutting anything short. They're damaging something others built with real effort.

I have no problem saying I know how to do good marketing. But the place where I do it, and the rules I follow, matter just as much as the result.

Why is there still hesitation around affiliate marketing from stores?

The hesitation comes, largely, from a lack of knowledge. Not bad faith — just lack of knowledge. Affiliate marketing is the only marketing channel where you pay strictly for results: you don't pay for a click, you don't pay for a view, you don't pay for intent — you pay for a confirmed sale. But if you don't truly understand that, you stay on the surface: low commission, delayed approvals, poorly updated feed.

As an advertiser, you are a product in a market. The affiliate looks at your conversion rate, your EPC, how quickly you validate and pay — and decides in seconds whether it's worth investing their traffic in you or someone else. They don't call you, don't negotiate, don't ask for your offer. They compare. And if you're unprepared, they move on. Then you wonder why affiliate marketing "doesn't work for you." It's not the channel — it's the relationship you built with it.

So the right question isn't "should I open an affiliate program?" — it's "am I ready to be an attractive advertiser?" Do you have a site that converts? Do you know your margin and can you sustain a real commission? Are you willing to validate promptly and pay on time? If yes to all three, affiliate marketing is waiting for you. If not, fix that first — and only then open the program.

This isn't theory. In BusinessLeague on 2Performant you'll find: bookzone.ro, drmax.ro, springfarma.com, otter.ro, carturesti.ro, answear.ro, fashiondays.ro, petmax.ro, noriel.ro, libris.ro, scule365.ro, petmart.ro. Books, pharmacy, fashion, toys, tools. They don't share a category — they share the decision that affiliate marketing is a channel worth taking seriously.

Tell us about your education project.

I believe people were put on this earth to multiply good. After hundreds of conversations with e-commerce entrepreneurs, I've come to the conclusion that many of them don't know how to think through their business.

Some are just starting out and have no way of knowing. Others have been in entrepreneurship for years and still haven't clarified the fundamentals: margin, markup, break-even, how to build their pricing, what healthy cash flow looks like. They want sales, they want a ROAS. End of story. And without these foundations, you end up selling at any price, putting any product in your store, demanding impossible results from everyone who works with you — and wondering why it's not working.

That's how the blog on mugurifrim.ro emerged — more than it was built.

I write about the basics, with real examples. The goal is simple: you should have something useful in hand after reading. What you do with that information is also up to you.

How do you see affiliate marketing in the medium and long term?

I think affiliate marketing will grow in Romania, but not on its own. It will grow as entrepreneurs become better educated — by the network, by affiliates, by anyone with the patience to explain. Because hesitation doesn't come from bad will. It comes from fear. And fear comes from lack of knowledge.

If you don't understand a channel, you're not comfortable with it. If you're not comfortable, you're not convinced. If you're not 100% convinced, the automatic answer is no — or a half-hearted yes, which is worse than a clear no.

In the long run, I see affiliate marketing naturally integrated into the mix of any serious store. But for that, more education is needed — at scale, not just person to person.