With global lockdowns and rising unemployment, more and more people were looking for alternative income streams last year. Forex and CFD brokers were seeing record numbers of new traders, many of them trading for the first time. Inexperienced traders, or those without the time to trade for themselves, were looking for viable solutions. Copy trading has been around for many years, but 2020 was the year it came into the spotlight.
 
Copy trading allows new traders the opportunity to leverage someone else’s market experience and knowledge in trading and risk management. Copy trading also allows experienced traders to guide others in portfolio diversification. Instead of putting all their capital into a single position, strategy or asset, traders can learn to deploy multiple trading strategies in different markets.
 
If you’re an experienced trader, BDSwiss can provide you the opportunity to leverage your knowledge through copy trading (available only to clients residing outside the EU) and earn impressive commissions. By becoming a partner, you can share your trading strategies with a huge community of traders, spread across more than 180 countries. Along with competitive commissions, you also earn through performance fees on your clients’ trading outcomes.

Become a Master Trader through the Affiliate and IB Partner Program

The BDSwiss Affiliate program enables anyone with a strong online presence in the financial markets to benefit from its competitive remuneration plans by referring clients to the site. Whereas the IB partnership program allows you to partner with one of the most trusted names in the industry to offer clients a state-of-the-art trading platform and comprehensive learning materials.
 
If you are a successful trader with a proven track record, you can start offering your strategies on the company’s intuitive and feature-rich MT4 platform. The BDSwiss mobile app is a multi-award winning and user-friendly trading interface, which allows you to manage your positions and monitor the markets on the go. Simply activate copy trading under Settings and you are good to go. Your clients will be able to see your trading activities on their dashboards and choose whether they would like to copy your strategies. Once they start copying your trades you will earn performance fees based on their trading outcomes.
 
As a Master Trader and a partner, you will receive your primary commissions and performance fees for referring clients to the company each month. The performance fees are based on the previous month’s winning trades, paid out at the beginning of the next month.
 

Advantages of the BDSwiss Partner Program

 
With an average 37% conversion rate, automated and optimised marketing funnels, timely pay-outs and dedicated call centres, you get to be part of an award-winning partnership program. Copy-trading further provides you opportunities to maximise client engagement, especially beginner traders who might prefer to follow and learn from an expert like you.
 
Not only can this boost your earnings, but it can also help you create a stellar market reputation. Setting up the platform is easy, with 24/5 multi-lingual call centres to help you with any support you might need.
 
BDSwiss has over 17,500+ registered partners worldwide with pay-outs totalling over €7,000,000 per month. When you choose to partner with this well-established programme, you stand to gain several benefits. Take a look:
 

1. All the Tools You Need to Monetise Your Traffic

 
When you refer clients to BDSwiss, you bring them to a world-class, award-winning platform to enhance their trading experiences. This includes sophisticated trading platforms, access to 1000+ forex pairs and multi-asset CFDs, daily market analysis and news, high liquidity, and tailored account types, catering to the varied needs of your clients. With transparent fees, tight spreads and ultra-fast execution, traders can maximise their trading potential.
 
Plus, you gain access to efficient tools to manage and monetise your traffic.
 

2. Easy Client Onboarding and Support

 
An easy onboarding process enables you to maximise conversion rates. Clients appreciate the 24/5 dedicated and multilingual customer support, along with multiple local and international payment methods.
 

3. Wide Variety of Marketing Materials

 
Enhance your online presence and reach out to traders through varied marketing materials, including landing pages, displayed banners, branded merchandise and sponsored educational events for traders and local business development seminars.
 

4. A 360° Tracking Solution

 
Track all your client activities and conversions through a single platform, specially designed for affiliate partners. BDSwiss provides complete control of your earnings with a transparent and personalised commission structure that can be tracked in real-time. You can also track mobile traffic independently.
 
For IB partners, BDSwiss offers a dashboard to monitor your clients’ trades effectively and in a transparent manner. You can also access statements of your clients’ trades via your IB portal.
 

5. High Quality Educational Materials and Videos

 
Clients of both IB and affiliate partners have access to a rich resource of educational material and videos, to improve their trading skills and stay up-to-date with market happenings.
 

Remain Compliant with Swift Response to Regulatory Changes

 
In a dynamic regulatory landscape, partnership with a transparent and regulated broker that swiftly responds to changes in laws and guidelines can be a major differentiator. BDSwiss considers client fund safety as its utmost priority. When the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced a ban on the sale of cryptocurrency derivatives to retail traders in January 2021, the company promptly enforced the new rule for all clients permanently residing in the UK. The decision was also enforced for clients trading with BDSwiss Holding Ltd, which is authorised and regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).
 
This included sending timely emails to clients in late 2020, informing them of the upcoming ban and ensuring that all open positions were closed. Even before the ban, BDSwiss offered the prescribed leverage limits on all cryptocurrency derivatives and invested extensively in traders’ education, risk disclosures, and Know Your Customer (KYC) controls.
 
You gain an edge over the competition when your clients know they are trading with a responsible broker, invested in their long-term success.
 
The support of a reputed broker partner, together with your trading experience, provides the perfect combination to build your clientele and market reputation.

Affiliate marketing has become a key source of online income for thousands of tech-savvy entrepreneurs. BDSwiss’ Affiliate Program empowers entrepreneurial individuals to earn a supplementary income by introducing our products and services to their respective audiences. By referring clients to BDSwiss, a company or an individual can become an affiliate and generate returns via commissions on client trading activity.

Our affiliate program includes 16,000 existing affiliates in over 180 countries who generate a total of 2.5 million leads per month. Importantly for our affiliates, our client conversion rate is 37% – one of the highest conversation rates in the entire FX/CFD industry.

Influencer marketing continues to thrive

In recent years, social media influencers have taken the Internet by storm, helping to boost sales and client acquisition for thousands of affiliates in both the FX industry and beyond. This trend is set to continue as a growing number of consumers turn to the financial markets, as both traders and investors.

More specifically, 2021 is set to become the year in which live streaming explodes onto the screens of most retail traders. Streaming services from the likes of YouTube, Twitch and Facebook have catalysed a variety of market sectors, namely consumer goods, entertainment and the rise of “YouTubing” as a verb and a profession. Live streaming is an engaging method for novice traders to connect with established online personalities on a global scale.

According to digital market research company 99Firms, around 80% of consumers prefer watching live videos rather than reading a blog. Also, video streaming already accounts for 82% of all internet traffic. Another factor that is sure to attract affiliates is the fact that consumers are 39% more likely to share video content, compared to text and audio. In 2021, affiliates that turn to video as their prime form of media, are likely to outperform those that remain text and audio focused.

The ramifications are clear: the insatiable growth of internet connectivity, online services and innovative technology has created a world of opportunity for affiliates. Another supplementary factor is the growth of Mobile – smartphones have rapidly become the tool of choice for the vast majority of clients consuming affiliate marketing content.

Social media sprawl

Social media is one of the most powerful tools in an affiliate marketer’s toolkit. According to market research, there are now more than 4 billion social media users globally, with annual growth somewhere in the region of 10%. In other words, around 400 million users flock to using social media every year, and many of them have the means and capability to become traders. Moreover, there are now more than 5 billion people using internet-ready mobile phones which yet again highlights the social media’s market reach.

The message to affiliates is rather simple: Dominating a single platform is not enough anymore.

Generating leads from just one social media channel is suboptimal because users have a wide variety of preferred platforms. Some users will only use one vendor, while others will use multiple.

As such, the key to an affiliates’ success is their ability to repurpose their original content across multiple platforms relevant to their target audiences. That means knowing and understanding the market, as well as cultural themes and traditions that transcend the FX industry.

KEY FACT: Social media users are now spending an average of almost 2.5 hours per day, networking across an average of 8 social networks and messaging apps.

Regulatory headwinds

In addition to factors that spell opportunity, affiliates have also been buffeted by less palatable trends such as regulatory activity. The past few years have brought persistently tougher regulation, especially in the most liquid markets such as the US, Europe and Japan.

Brokers, clients and affiliates alike have all felt the squeeze of tougher market regulation in the form of higher capital requirements, greater KYC checks and lower leverage, especially for novice traders. As a result, affiliates are facing steeper market standards which means a higher need for more attention to detail and offering value add services to fend off competition.

In 2021, we are likely to see further regulatory tweaks aimed at protecting consumers and the wider market, which effectively sets a higher bar for affiliates to reach.

The good news is that despite the strict regulatory environment, BDSwiss is always fully cognizant of global regulatory changes and ensures both company and affiliate activity is always compliant with existing regulation. Our commitment to operational security and mitigating the effect of tough regulation on clients, lets our affiliates know that they are building their respective businesses partnered with a dependable broker they can trust.

Only time will tell what kind of regulatory hurdles 2021 will bring, but affiliates are advised to keep a watchful eye on regulators next year. We certainly are – and we intend to mitigate any draconian measures by making appropriate operational decisions and always communicating impending market changes to our partners, as soon as possible. 

Paying the pied piper

The rampant growth of payments solutions, amidst the broader development of financial technology (fintech), remains a huge factor for affiliate marketers. In 2020, brokers that offered a wide range of payment options were able to secure more clients, from a wider range of geographies compared to brokers offering simple bank transfers and card payments.

The harsh reality is that around 2 billion people in the world remain “unbanked” and without access to financial services – a key requirement for affiliates seeking to incentivise new clients to open a trading account. The problem doesn’t only affect developing countries either. According to the US Federal Reserve, there are were as many as 55 million unbanked adult Americans in 2018, around 22% of US households.

For BDSwiss affiliates, their ability to attract new clients was significantly boosted after we added PayPal to our payment options arsenal in August 2020. The milestone made BDSwiss the first offshore broker to add PayPal as a payment method for its clients and affiliates. As the preferred payment option for more than 300 million consumers worldwide, PayPal simplifies transactions by allowing users to register their credit/debit card or bank account and make secure online transactions without having to share their financial information with third-party vendors or platforms.

The ultimate result is that utilising additional payment options such as PayPal tends to improve conversion rates, extends average customer lifetime value and raises client satisfaction – a factor that is likely to drive affiliate performance well into 2021 and beyond.

An affiliate’s best friend: market volatility

Market volatility has yet again proved to be a significant catalyst for all market participants in the FX industry. More so than for any other group, affiliates have discovered 2020 to be an opportunistic year in which the COVID-19 pandemic directly affected market volatility, especially in the first half of 2020. Greater volatility incentivises more potential clients to open their first accounts while also boosting trading volumes amongst existing clients. Huge tilts in equity markets in Q1 and Q2 led to a sharp rise in trading activity and presented an excellent market environment for all affiliates.

As a result of heightened volatility in all asset classes throughout 2020, brokers and affiliates have enjoyed extremely lucrative trading conditions and higher trading volumes. Moving forward into 2021, the factors that directly influenced market prices (COVID, political issues and risk-aversion) are likely to linger at least until the COVID pandemic has been priced into the market. For the time being, volatility is here to stay, which means favourable conditions for affiliate marketers in 2021.

As a means of maximising on the available opportunities to attract new clientele, affiliates are strongly advised to support their content with expert opinion and professional-grade content that addresses issues clients are actively thinking about.

Better quality content leads to higher engagement rates, which means affiliates are likely to undergo a quality litmus test in 2021. Affiliates that do not, or cannot, produce original content that adds value to the consumer, will likely struggle to obtain unique or repeat visits, or to generate significant engagement in their affiliate marketing activities.

The Final Word

Affiliate marketers must remember that both paid and free traffic can be effective in delivering a return on investment (ROI). There is a substitute for paid ads, but there are no substitutes for content novelty and quality. Retail FX and CFD clients are becoming more product savvy and are far more aware of various industry changes than they like to admit. Therefore, simplistic volume-based incentives, expensive trading terms without perceivable added value and generic analyst content will not be sufficient to drive strong client growth in 2021.

For affiliates, the challenge is to deliver quality content and attractive offers without breaking the bank. To do this adequately, affiliates must remember to do the following:

•       constantly track all social media posts and interactions,
•       actively manage (and tweak) their active advertising campaigns,
•       use real-time data to actively optimise all marketing activity,

·        obtain regular feedback from their ad networks and implement changes as soon as new trends are identified.