Alessandro Valente: The making of Brazil’s OG super affiliate

Starting out as a web developer in the early 2000s, Alessandro Valente had never heard of affiliate marketing. When a friend introduced him to the concept and explained how profitable it could be, he had his doubts. But joining the UK affiliate Online Bingo Friends as a site builder changed his perspective.

“That project made me realise my friend had been right all along,” Valente recalls. “If companies were willing to pay well for affiliate websites, there was clearly a business opportunity behind them.”

Feeling inspired, he launched three blogs in 2006, marking out his own online territory in iGaming affiliation. Unknown to him at the time, that small experiment would lead him to become one of the most influential affiliates in Brazil two decades later, eventually claiming the iGBA Affiliate Idol lifetime award.

From Influx Media to Super Afiliados

Continuing the momentum, Valente co-founded the UK-registered affiliate company Influx Media in 2009, targeting the nascent Brazilian iGaming market. He describes the pre-regulation market as “completely unexplored”, with its scale minuscule compared to today: referring just a thousand players in a month was a landmark event worth celebrating, while some companies can now acquire tens or even hundreds of thousands of players in the same period.

“Only a handful of courageous entrepreneurs were willing to take the risk of building this industry from scratch across Brazil and Latin America. Looking back, we were all pioneers trying to create something that simply didn’t exist,” Valente reflects.

The venture quickly took off. In just a few years, it grew to comprise nearly 800 websites, hundreds of social media pages and a wide range of digital marketing assets. When Afiliados Brasil, the first affiliate conference in Brazil, was launched in 2013, Valente and his colleagues knew they had to be part of the movement. That same year, they created a new company, Super Afiliados, with the mission of “helping affiliates build sustainable businesses in the industry”.

Learning from the ‘Ouch’ moment

An entrepreneur’s path is rarely a straight line, and learning from mistakes is a necessary step. For Valente, that ordeal came in 2014. Earlier in the year, competitors had warned him of operators closing down affiliate accounts and dramatically slashing commissions. But confident that Influx Media was one of the largest affiliates in Brazil, Valente believed the company was protected.

He was wrong. By December, several of Influx Media’s biggest partners had either terminated agreements or reduced rev share commissions from around 40% to as little as 5%, with many replacing lifetime deals with 12-month contracts.

“The experience taught me one fundamental lesson: never become overly dependent on any single business model or revenue source,” he said. Confronted with the company’s liquidation, Valente’s priority became survival and reinvention. He joined senior positions at global gaming companies including Betsson Group to help operators gain their foothold in Brazil. What started as a major setback turned out not to be a disaster at all, but a worthwhile growth opportunity that made him “a much better entrepreneur.”

“Joining the operator side of the industry was one of the best decisions I ever made,” Valente says. “Those experiences gave me a completely different perspective. As an affiliate, you naturally focus on traffic and acquisition. Working for operators allowed me to understand the operational challenges, regulatory pressures, customer retention strategies and commercial realities behind the business.”

Playing a changed game

Gradually, as Valente redirected more energy back into his own venture, the focus became Super Afiliados, which runs a large sub-affiliation network. The strategic focus, he says, is bringing both new and experienced affiliates into the ecosystem through competitive commercial agreements and extensive industry knowledge, alongside a breadth of consulting services.

And the brand is expanding. Following its acquisition of the affiliate marketplace Affiliapass and part of Betpass’s Brazilian operations, Valente is restructuring the business for its next stage of growth – all against the backdrop of the country’s recent launch of the regulated iGaming market. A daunting part of the new legal framework is the compulsory player re-registration requirement, which many affiliates have cited as a reason for their continued regional underperformance.

Valente admits the process initially had a “noticeable impact” on conversion rates. In the long run, however, he believes re-registration has strengthened the market by filtering out low-quality registrations and improving the value of active players.

“Like every major industry change, it required adaptation. We reviewed our acquisition strategies, adjusted our expectations and evolved alongside the new regulatory environment,” he says. “One of the greatest strengths of entrepreneurs is the ability to adapt. Markets change, regulations change, and successful businesses are those that continuously reinvent themselves.”

The pressure is not only regulatory. Brazil’s rapid transition has brought a new wave of international attention. Better Collective and other global companies have been expanding their presence in the region, changing the competitive landscape for affiliates that spent years building the market from the ground up.

But Valente views this as more of a validation than a threat. “I remember a time when Brazilian traffic attracted very little interest from either operators or affiliate groups. Many international companies simply didn’t believe the region had significant potential,” he explains.

“Today, the fact that major international companies are investing heavily in Brazil validates what many of us believed years ago – that this market has enormous long-term potential.”

At the same time, affiliates are contending with a changing search environment. Valente has seen news publishers gain greater visibility for highly competitive search terms, particularly around regulation, legislation and industry news. But he does not believe this signals the end of affiliate SEO.

“Affiliates still create significant value by producing in-depth reviews, comparisons, educational content and long-form resources that news organisations generally don’t provide,” he says. “The challenge is no longer simply ranking for broad keywords but building authority, trust and genuinely useful content that answers users’ questions better than anyone else.”

Another emerging acquisition model is influencer marketing. While Valente sees the channel as a positive development overall, he also believes it requires stronger discipline. A small number of influencers, he warns, have promoted unrealistic expectations or misleading information, damaging trust in the wider industry. The opportunity is not in chasing volume at any cost, but in building sustainable, compliant businesses that can withstand regulatory scrutiny.

Becoming a legend

Despite Valente’s long track record, winning the Affiliate Idol award in London, where his industry journey began, still caught him off guard.

“It genuinely came as quite a surprise. I certainly wasn’t expecting it, so I felt both honoured and humbled to receive the award,” he says. “To be recognised among the industry’s leading affiliates means a great deal to me. It’s quite remarkable to think that a journey which started almost 20 years ago, building websites from my bedroom, has led to this.

“Receiving that recognition in the UK, where my affiliate journey first began, makes it especially meaningful. It’s something I’ll always be proud of.”

But for Valente, the story of Brazil’s affiliate market is far from finished. Looking ahead, he expects regulation to continue defining the shape of the sector. One of the biggest shifts, he believes, could be the formal recognition of affiliates themselves, whether through certification, licensing or another compliance framework.

“As the Brazilian market becomes increasingly regulated, I expect affiliates to become more professional, transparent and accountable,” he says. “While this will create additional compliance requirements, it will also increase credibility and attract more long-term investment into the sector.”

This commitment to professionalism is also the advice he would give to his younger self. Looking back, Valente says he would treat every business as a serious venture from the beginning, even if it started as a hobby or side project. That means putting proper contracts in place, managing finances, documenting processes and building strong governance early.

“Be professional from day one,” he says. “Those habits may seem unnecessary at the beginning, but they prevent many problems as the business grows. Professionalism compounds just as much as success does.”

The lesson feels fitting for a career built on reinvention and adaptation. Valente’s two decades in the industry have been full of ebbs and flows, but he is left with no regrets. In a market that is still unfolding, he is determined to grow with it and weather the tides.