The TopRanked.io Weekly Digest: What’s Hot in Affiliate Marketing [Esperio Partners Review]

Quick Disclosure: We’re about to tell you how Esperio Partners run a top-notch affiliate program. And we really mean it. Just know that if you click on an Esperio link, we may earn a small commission. Your choice.

Summer’s theoretically been over for a few weeks now. But, it’s taken me until now to notice the days are getting shorter.

On the positive side, this reminded me I’ll soon become just like Cher’s face… a time traveler.

But it also means long, dark nights are coming.

Of course, this isn’t all bad.

You see, even before the baby Jesus was born, there was a ton of literature out there about shining stars guiding the way at night, 

The Greeks even made a name based around this concept — Esperio — derived from hésperos, meaning “evening star”.

As for what any of this has to do with affiliate marketing… well, read on.

Topranked.io Affiliate Program of the Week — Esperio Partners

Anyone with a name like Esperio would be pretty nice to partner up with, right? After all, who doesn’t want an evening star to light the way?

Lucky for you, you can partner up with Esperio today.

Introducing Esperio Partners.

Esperio Partners — Here’s What You’ll Be Selling

In case you didn’t read the banned (Esperio Partners won the World Forex Award for the Best Affiliate Program in 2021), Esperio is a Forex trading platform.

Now, I won’t cover too much of it in detail here. I’m pretty sure we all know what a forex trading platform entails by now.

What I will say, however, is that unlike other forex trading platforms, Esperio has a bunch of client bonuses and promotions that are actually enticing.

These have names like:

• Extra Empower
• Double Empower
• Empower CashBack
• 2% per month – 24% per year
• Esperio Profit Boost
• Vip-service
• Double Deal #6 APPLE

Now, again, I won’t cover all the details here. You can check these out on Esperio for yourself.

But, just for fun, let’s take the last one — Double Deal #6 APPLE.

This is where Esperio clients (whom you hopefully referred) “Get Apple shares when topping up [their] account”.

This is, of course, only for a limited time. But most of the other bonuses/promotions are more permanent.

And you can expect more numbered deals from Esperio to come.

As for why you, the affiliate, should care about this, I’ve got one word.

Conversions.

These sorts of deals are great for helping people pull the trigger on creating an account.

And when people pull the trigger on creating (and funding an account), you profit.

That’s why you should care.

Esperio Commissions

On to the Esperio Partners commissions.

Let’s start with the easy stuff — “Fast CPA”.

The main takeaway here is that you’ll receive “the amount of the initial deposit of the active client, but not more than the amount established for the country of the attracted client.”

As for what “the amount established for [a] country” is, that works like so:

• Tier 1: $500
• Tier 2: $400
• Tier 3: $300

In other words, if you attract a US client and they deposit $500 or more, Esperio Partners pay you $500.

Now, this isn’t quite the cap on what you can earn with Esperio Partners. In fact, you can earn considerably more. However, for the purposes of keeping this review short, I’ll leave that for you to investigate.

And just in case you were wondering, here’s a visual representation of why I’m not going too in depth on Esperio Partners commissions.

Final Word on Esperio Partners

Look, Forex brokers are a dime a dozen these days. That means there are plenty of options out there for forex partner programs, too.

However, not all of them are up to Esperio’s standards.

Firstly, the commissions are solid and, in terms of CPL and CPA, relatively straightforward. None of this “client must complete five actions and then we only pay you x% of our y% commission on spreads on certain transactions” stuff.

Instead, you get a nice clean “first deposit amount” (up to a certain limit) deal.

Esperio is also likely to convert a bit better than many other platforms. For starters, it’s got a few awards under its belt.

And, as we touched on, the bonuses and promotions Esperio runs are actually the kind of things clients are likely to care about.

So if that’s not going to do it for you, then I don’t know what will.

But if it does do it for you, head here to get started with Esperio Partners.

Affiliate News Takeaways

Meta AI

This week, Meta announced it is “introducing new AI experiences across [its] family of apps and devices.” Here’s the blog post announcing it.

As for what you can expect, there’s the usual image editing with AI stuff coming.

There are also “AI stickers that enable you to effortlessly generate customized stickers for your chats and stories.” (Finally, an innovative generative AI use case.)

And, you’ll also soon have “a universe of characters at your fingertips.”

These are basically AI chatbots based off of different personalities, like MrBeast (who’s AI alter-ego will be called Zach). Meta says he’s “the big brother who will roast you — because he cares.”

But don’t worry — there’s nothing creepy going on when Meta (the biggest spy tech company in the world) compares its AI Chatbot to Big Brother.

But as cool as all this shiny new stuff is, that’s not why I’m bringing this story up here.

Meta also dropped the news that it’s introducing an “AI studio for people and developers to build their own AIs.”

This could have some use for affiliates. (Not that sending AI-generated stickers to your AI chatbot BFF isn’t useful for affiliates… if that’s your thing and you’re an affiliate, more power to you.)

Anyway. To cut a long story short, businesses will “be able to create AIs that reflect their brand’s values and improve customer service experiences.”

And creators will “be able to build AIs that extend their virtual presence across [Meta’s] apps.”

Takeaway

Do you remember that time when we were talking about putting AI chatbots on Meta platforms to sell stuff? (If you don’t, go read it — there’s a money-making idea there.)

Well, Meta basically just gave you the tools to do this without having to faff around with integrating third-party tools.

Now, of course, you can 100% expect that whatever tools Meta makes available to you will be 100% bland, boring, brand-safe dross.

So, if you’re going to take our “flirty AI girlfriend selling adult camming sites” recipe, you’re probably still going to have to go third party.

But, for anything else, there might be something here for you.

As for what that anything else is in a sanitized world — how about you create a “Warren Buffer” AI that doles out knowledge about the financial markets?

Now monetize with Esperio.

What’s the Future of Scraping?

So, speaking of AI, scraping stuff off the web has been getting a lot of attention lately.

Today, Twitter put its new terms of service into effect. Under the “Misuse of the Services” section, you’ll now find a firm “crawling or scraping the Services in any form, for any purpose without our prior written consent is expressly prohibited.”

And yesterday we caught wind of Medium “actively recruiting for a coalition of other platforms” to engage in the fight against those nasty AI bots.

Amongst other things, we see the usual tough talk in this post about beating anyone not complying with its robots.txt or Terms of Service with a big fat cease and desist.

Of course, these are just the latest stories about platforms trying to get tough on scrapers in the age of AI. There have already been a few others over the last few months.

And surely, many more are to come.

So, if you’re currently scraping data, should you be worried that the end is night?

Well, I went on a bit of a deep dive for you.

Here’s what I found.

Before We Begin — A Disclaimer

Just for the record. I am 100% not a lawyer.

So, like, you know… don’t take my advice.

Back to the story.

Some Case History — Spammy Web Scrapers v. Big Tech Goliath

For the most part, the history of Spammy Web Scrapers v. Big Tech Goliath in the courts has been pretty favorable to scrapers.

In fact, it was only late last year that the “landmark” hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn case just wrapped up.

FYI, the court more or less gave the green light to scraping.

Now, yes, the final ruling in this case did get reported as a victory for LinkedIn (hiQ Labs was the scraper in this case).

But (and this is a big but), the LinkedIn victory relied on a major caveat that won’t apply to most scraping use cases.

You see, that case turned on the fact that hiQ had violated the LinkedIn user agreement.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

Doesn’t this apply to any website banning scraping in their terms of use?

Well, Medium seems to think so. It was quick to point this out in its blog post that its lawyers say its “terms of use prohibiting scraping are enforceable.”

As for what those terms of service are, here’s the bit dealing with scrapers:

“You agree not to do, try to do, or cause a third party to… use any software, script, robot, spider or other automatic device, process or means (including crawlers, browser plugins and add-ons or any other technology) to access the Services for any purpose, including without limitation to scrape or otherwise copy any of the data or content on the Services.”

That sounds like serious business.

But here’s the thing.

Medium is probably 100% wrong (as of this moment).

To see why, let’s start with a screenshot.

That, for reference, is what you’ll see as a non-logged-in user arriving at Medium for the first time.

There’s a Privacy Policy consent popup.

And another popup trying to get you to sign up.

And then there’s the content sitting there, just waiting for you to scrape it.

Do you see why Medium is probably 100% wrong about its terms of use being enforceable?

No?

How about this screenshot from Twitter that I just took today?

Same thing.

Despite what Twitter might say in its Terms of Service, you’re probably 100% in the clear to scrape this Elon Musk post.

Do you see why yet?

If you don’t, Twitter actually provided you a hint right there under the “create account” button.

“By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Service”.

Yep, that’s right — I never signed up.

That means I accessed that content without ever agreeing to its terms of service.

Now, pay attention here.

That, dear readers, is where the LinkedIn victory against the scrapers was won.

You see, for the most part, the court actually said hiQ was almost in the clear. It wasn’t committing Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) violations, or anything like that.

Where hiQ fell down, however, was that it had been creating fake accounts in order to access data that LinkedIn blocked non-logged-in users from accessing.

That means hiQ would have had to agree to the LinkedIn user agreement to create accounts.

And that made the LinkedIn terms enforceable.

Simple as that.

So here’s your first test for whether a company is bullshitting or not when it claims its “terms of use prohibiting scraping are enforceable.” — if you didn’t agree to any terms of use/user agreement/insert any other contract name, then you can safely do whatever the f**k you want.

That also means you can scrape any website that throws up a popup with something like “By accessing our website you agree to our terms of service.”

The courts call that a “browser wrap”.

For the record, it’s the legal equivalent of a business putting up a sign that you don’t see until you’re already on their premises that says: “By entering our premises, you agree to some convoluted contract that we hid away someplace else.”

Basically, it’s unenforceable.

(PS: And yes, that also means your bots can safely ignore robots.txt files.)

With that said, just to be clear, when I say do whatever the f**k you want, do so within certain limits.

If you go scraping so hard that you effectively DDoS a website, then you’re opening up a completely different kettle of fish.

But It’s Not That Simple

So, if you can access content without agreeing to the terms of service or any other sort of contract, you’re safe to scrape it right?

Well, not so fast.

The history of scraping cases shows there are a few more technicalities to be aware of.

To illustrate, let’s pull one of the granddaddies of scraping cases out of the archives — the Nautical Solutions Marketing v. Boats.com case.

In that case, the same basic test above applied — Nautical Solutions Marketing (NMS) never agreed to the terms of service over at Boats.com. Therefore, the court threw out the Boats.com case on the “but they violated our terms of service” count.

But here’s the thing. Boats.com threw the kitchen sink at Nautical Solutions Marketing (NMS) and claimed a whole lot more than just ToS violations.

In this case, we also saw things as varied as state trespass laws through to copyright laws.

Now, on that trespass thing, the courts did the smart thing and threw that out. Since the Boats.com website was publicly accessible (it had its “gates up”), the court said Boats.com had no business claiming anyone was trespassing on its property.

But, on the copyright thing, there was a bit more consideration.

Now, I’m not going to get into the details of what is and isn’t copyright infringement. Even just covering the finer points of the Nautical Solutions Marketing v. Boats.com case alone is too complicated for my small brain. (For the record, NMS won because the court essentially said the Boats.com content — listings of boats for sale — wasn’t copyrightable.)

But, the real takeaway here is that just because scraping per se is okay (unless agree to a contract prohibiting scraping before accessing the content), doesn’t mean they won’t get you some other way.

Speaking of Other Ways They’ll Get You

Speaking of getting you some other way, here’s another “kitchen sink” case from the archives — Snap-On Business Solutions v. O’Neil Associates.

In this one, we again saw another kitchen sink case, where everything from copyright to “Tresspass to Chattels” and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) violations came up.

But this time, the court didn’t throw out things like the trespass claim.

Here, unlike the Nautical Solutions Marketing v. Boats.com case where Boats.com claimed unauthorized access, Snap-On instead argued it had suffered damages.

Here, they claimed that O’Neil’s activity had caused them to spend at least “200 hours diagnosing and repairing damage to its servers by the scraping program.”

And that was enough for the court to take the case against the scraper a bit more seriously.

Snap-On also brought forward a claim that O’Neil “unjustly obtained “business-related benefits” at the expense of Snap-on.”

That’s what’s called “Unjust Enrichment” in legal circles. Basically, it’s a way of claiming that another party “unfairly profited” at the expense of another.

Here, Snap-On said O’Neil profited by scraping Snap-On’s site. And that meant O’Neil was profiting at the expense of Snap-On.

Now, in this case, the court did throw out the claim.

But it didn’t do it because such a claim would have no merit.

Instead, it simply said Snap-On hadn’t provided enough evidence to prove its claim.

Takeaway

That’s enough of that for now.

Here are the takeaways.

• AI’s a thing and companies are getting more protective about their content than ever.
• We’re now hearing (and will probably hear more) about companies cracking down on scrapers.
• Expect to hear lots about “terms of service”, “cease and desist letters”, and other scary things that are, in many cases, 100% not enforceable if twenty-something years of case law has something to say about it. (With the exception of the caveats I outlined above.)
• However, if you’re going to scrape a company that’s hostile to scrapers, don’t get on their radar if there’s a chance they’ll sue you — there are a thousand other ways they can still waste your time and money with the courts.

Long story short, if you stick to low-profile scraping (and don’t agree to any contracts), you’re probably fine to keep on keeping on.

In other words, if your idea of scraping is pulling data off Yahoo Finance to feed the “Warren Buffer” chatbot you made, you might be okay.

Just don’t forget to monetize that chatbot… I hear Esperio is good.

Just don’t get so big that coming after you for nebulous “their bots damaged my servers” claims and other such things is worth anyone’s time and money.

Closing Thought

That opening about guiding stars… it got me thinking two things.

First, Esperio is a pretty cool name (and an even better affiliate program).

But it also got me thinking — how does one find their metaphorical “guiding star”?

You know, as in finding direction in life/business/whatever.

So I did a little research on Google. But that left me more confused than before.

Here’s one example from “lifehack.org” as to why.

That article opens up with basically telling you to stop overthinking.

But then it goes on to dole out advice like “Play Devil’s Advocate — For every option, find reasonable, logical, and legitimate reasons why you should choose the other option.”

Right.

Next.

Here’s another one titled “10 Steps to Finding Direction in Life”.

Step #2 in that one is to find a focus.

Hmm… but doesn’t one need a direction to know what to focus on?

That rules out the top two Google results for “how to find direction in life.”

Next.

How about WikiHow? That’s always a good resource.

Alright, Step #1 — “Notice what you truly enjoy doing.”

Hmm… this sounds a little like the old “find your passion and do that” thing. But I’m not sure how you’re going to use that advice if your true pleasures basically boil down to things like sh*tposting on the internet.”

Maybe all these articles are going about it the wrong way.

Maybe they’re all premised on the idea that your direction is something that will hit you like a bolt of lightning if you just stop thinking (but also overthink), and try new things to discover your passion.

But what if that divine flash of lightning never comes?

Well, how about we start from the end? That is, instead of thinking about this from the “self-actualization” perspective, we instead move down a few rungs on the Maslowian pyramid.

In other words, start your quest with something else you want. You know, like “I want to make money”.

You see, at its base, everything we do is geared towards something low down the Maslowian hierarchy.

Even if your “direction” is to become an artist, you only “become an artist” to satisfy some other basic need.

Otherwise, you’d just become a normal person who likes to make art — and a normal person who just likes to make art (but does nothing else) probably has no direction.

So, let’s just start with making money. In the modern world, that takes care of everything up until safety and security concerns.

It might even take care of “love and belonging” if you earn enough.

Now let’s try some simple questions.

Again, keep them primitive.

What tools and resources do I have available to help me make money? How skilled am I with these tools and resources? If I can’t use any of these tools and resources, can I learn them? 

Chances are, you’re going to find a bunch of things. And if you can’t, here’s a hint — everyone has the tools and resources of affiliate marketing available to them.

So, now you’ve got this list, let’s move up a rung — Esteem.

Will deploying any of these tools in order to make money help you gain respect, freedom, and other things you need to have a sense of self-esteem? (And, if it matters to you, the esteem of others?)

Chances are, there’s going to be something in there. And if you still think there’s nothing in there, think again. As an affiliate, you can promote a million different things in a million different ways, so keep thinking… you’ll find something.

So now comes the tricky part — the “guiding star” meaning of life stuff we all try to solve with self-help articles we find on Google.

This is the “self-actualization” step on the Maslow pyramid. It’s the bit that depends on things like “creativity, spontaneity, growth, play” and other such concepts that have to do with achieving your full potential as a human.

Now, do you notice all these sorts of things can apply to anything?

Take affiliate marketing, for example.

Do you really think it’s all about analyzing conversion rates and counting how many beans you made?

The answer, of course, is no.

You can be creative as an affiliate marketer. You can play. You can do all that stuff.

Even if your idea of play and creativity is sh*tposting memes on Reddit, guess what?

Affiliate marketing will help you find a way to monetize it, thus giving you “direction” to your otherwise directionless life.

Heck, you can even simply strive to become the “best affiliate marketer” ever, thus living up to your true potential as a human.

Basically, however, you go about it, there’s a way to find self actualization in anything. (Especially affiliate marketing.)

So, maybe the real solution to finding your purpose in life has nothing to do with “staying positive”, “identifying your values” and other such stuff.

Instead, maybe it starts by realizing that the road to self-actualization is actually a pyramid — a Maslowian pyramid — and that the only way to build a pyramid is to pick up the tools you have and start building it.

And, in case I haven’t said it enough, let me say it again.

Affiliate marketing is a great tool for building a pyramid. Heck, I’ll go out on a limb and say it — affiliate marketing is the meaning of life.

So now you’ve found your shining light — your north star — here’s another shining star to help light your road — Esperio.

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(Featured image by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS via Pexels)

DISCLAIMER: This article was written by a third party contributor and does not reflect the opinion of Born2Invest, its management, staff or its associates. Please review our disclaimer for more information.

This article may include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words “believe,” “project,” “estimate,” “become,” “plan,” “will,” and similar expressions, including with regards to potential earnings in the Empire Flippers affiliate program. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks as well as uncertainties, including those discussed in the following cautionary statements and elsewhere in this article and on this site. Although the Company may believe that its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, the actual results that the Company may achieve may differ materially from any forward-looking statements, which reflect the opinions of the management of the Company only as of the date hereof. Additionally, please make sure to read these important disclosures.