‘The secret is patience’ – Long standing NetRefer CEO shares formula to success

Earlier this year, local Affiliate Marketing company NetRefer celebrated its 15th anniversary. In celebration of this commendable milestone, Raphael Arnold – NetRefer’s Founder and CEO – shared a few tips and tricks that helped him turn a start-up into an award-winning industry leader.

“It’s simple – the secret is patience. Everything goes through cycles, there is a momentum to things, and time is a great leveler. Having the right instinct to read and understand timing is vital, and that’s where patience comes in,” Mr Arnold said.

Back in 1998, the Founder-CEO started off his career as a Marketing Consultant at South African company Forward Slash. There he was involved in developing and launching ‘one of the first major affiliate programs’ in the iGaming industry.

From that point on, a career in affiliate marketing seemed like the natural next step for Mr Arnold.

“After [launching the program], wherever I went, most Heads of Affiliates, Marketing, and Finance in iGaming kept asking me to build them an affiliate program. I thought it would be a great opportunity to build a standardised product that is useful and valuable to businesses, and so NetRefer was born,” the CEO continued.

Nowadays, NetRefer is powered by tens of technology and marketing experts that have slowly yet surely transformed the company into a premier platform for performance marketing solutions.

“I think that when you start something, you have to make sure you see it through. You can’t swim halfway and then decide you’re not going to make it till the end – giving up should should never be an option. It’s about going the full mile and embracing all the challenges along the way,” Mr Arnold highlighted.

Of course, throughout the past 15 years, NetRefer came across its fair share of challenges, its most recent one being the COVID-19 pandemic. The company’s CEO noted how the biggest impact this worldwide phenomenon had on the marketing industry was that it rapidly accelerated ‘global digital transformation’.

As a result of this, NetRefer, together with its industry competitors, has had to “understand how rapidly the landscape is changing” and thus, “invest heavily in digitising [its] business.”

“Beyond [perseverance], good intentions, backed up by strong values and ethics are equally important when doing business. And, one of the most important things in business is believing in people – professionally and personally,” Mr Arnold continued.

“It’s important to know that these individuals are the living fabric of our business network and their livelihoods are on the line – this reminds us of the importance of our work,” the CEO concluded.