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Sergey Pavlovich is a former carder who served 10 years for stealing ~$36 million as part of a group. Now Sergey is a successful entrepreneur and the author of the YouTube channel "People PRO".
Contents:
The story of how Oleg met Seryozha.
Interviewer:
Friends, hello everyone. Today I have a guest who needs no introduction. A former cybercriminal, entrepreneur, writer, blogger and my friend Sergey Pavlovich. He is also the author of a book that is selling well.
Pavlovich:
Hello, Seryozha. And we don’t need any advertising, hello. What are we going to talk about today? You have been interviewing me all this time, yes, and now you have grown to the point that I am interviewing you.
Interviewer:
Yes, yes. It’s funny, we have a story of how we met. Do you remember that I wrote you an e-mail with a script about Black SEO? E-mail. To admin@carding.pro . I said, Seryozha, let me come to your podcast. And you responded to me by e-mail. I said, yes, let’s do it, by e-mail.
Pavlovich:
Well, about the e-mail, you reminded me of a funny story about Ed Sheeran, that famous British musician, right? He says, I haven’t used my phone since 2015, I think, because, he says, when I became popular, there were about 10 thousand people in my phone book, and they all started writing something, it was hell. And that’s why he doesn’t use his mobile phone at all, he answers everyone by email.
Interviewer:
Well, that’s how it is, and you answered me by email too. I came to your first podcast, you and I were standing after the podcast. I say, listen, what should I film? How do I start filming? You say, well, film something. When I came to you for the third one, you said, yes, you’ve had enough. In short, let’s announce on this podcast that you’re launching a channel, and you won’t have a chance to back out. Actually, that’s how, friends, I came to YouTube thanks to Seryozha.
Pavlovich:
Not only you, about six more people probably came. Or even eight to YouTube thanks to me.
Interviewer:
That’s it. Not like your trendy producers. Here's a guy who makes a lot of bloggers. Look, I want to talk about what. About your story, how you ended up in prison, you got out and built your business empire, that is, it's rare that a person served 10 years and then built a white business empire, we're not talking about Don Corleone and the like, right? So let's talk about carding first. For those who don't know you at all, tell us what you did and why you were jailed for 10 years.
How did you get into carding?
Pavlovich:
Well, carding is a type of cybercrime where you're involved with other people's cards, yes, cards, accounts, it basically comes from the word "card". Well, I started here pretty early, I don't remember, probably 14-15 years old, well, 14 more likely. And we were... the 90s, yes, a time of famine, parents working two or three jobs to feed the family. Well, for those who had computers, the Internet was the first to appear in families, and so on.
We were left to our own devices and were up to something on the Internet. Well, mostly, of course, all sorts of dark topics, because there were no ideas for any kind of business or startups. Well, it was not the right environment and, in essence, whoever dug up something did what, so some went into journalism, others went somewhere else. I was studying at the institute and there was no money in the family, my mother and stepfather were living in a second marriage and, in short, there was no money in the family at all and I accidentally got into carding because I had never
been involved in crime. All my life I sold some goods. I remember as far back as I can remember, in the first and second grades of school, when the Soviet Union still existed, I bought Malbra stickers there for a ruble and sold them at school for 10, I was a super profiteer.
Interviewer:
Cool, great.
Pavlovich:
Then I found some Puma sneakers somewhere on stocks and sold them for a normal price. And I also liked the access to the Internet. I was selling, those who are younger don't remember, but you and I still remember that dial-up access, when it was 33,600 and then 56 via modem. You had to erase the cards. Yes, you can dial. And one company had unlimited. Young providers, when they entered the market, often offered packages, unlimited, for example, for 50 dollars.
I sold them for 100, that is, well, 100 percent. And like 50 dollars at that time, yes, this is, I don't know, 1995, 2006, 2007, 2008. That is, it was a lot of money, 50 dollars. It's like now, probably 500 in purchasing power, well, depending on the country, but approximately.
Interviewer:
Well, approximately, yes, most likely, yes.
Pavlovich:
Approximately like a five-hundredth. And so I was selling. And then I accidentally got into carding. One of my friends asked me if there were other people's cards there, for sale somewhere. And I had seen them a hundred times on the bulletin board of a Belarusian computer newspaper, where I basically sold my own goods. I saw them, took him, I think, 600 dollars and paid for it. But in the end it turned out that he did not buy them back from me, and that's it, I put all my money there, 600 dollars is a lot for a schoolboy. And I still have these cards. And I think, well, I need to try to put them somewhere then. And
that's how it all started. They put in little by little, it's called clothing carding. Some goods, electronics, clothes, basically everything that could be reached, that were sent to our long-suffering country, let's say. And then I sold more cards, naturally, dumps. This is already a dump, this is already a thing that is written on the magnetic strip of a credit card, you can buy it in a physical real shop.
But now you won't be surprised by this, it used to be rare, like most shops didn't even have POS terminals, you just buy for cash and that's it. In general, I sold these dumps, but sometimes I sent my guys, especially when dumps with pin codes were found right in ATMs, withdraw cash, well, and so on there a little at a time.
Interviewer:
How did you do it in ATMs? How does it work? How did you steal this data from an ATM?
Pavlovich:
It's not exactly like stealing, that is, there were ban... In short, the dump, it's inside, it contains the card number, its expiration date and a few more digits, well, I don't know, 10, 20, 30, half of them are zeros, which supposedly, well, not even supposedly, but directly give you access to the bank account. And it happened that the dump could be written manually, that is, some banks did not check what digits you scribbled there.
You just take the card number, its expiration date, put 201 there, let's say, a digit, and the rest are zeros, and that's it. Phishers got it, wrote about victims, take an email database, for example, make a phishing site like Bank of America, MBNA, Capital One, I remember one of those, Fleetbank, Chase bought it out later, I think, and that's it, they just sent it out to the database, like, go in, you need something, change your PIN code, let's say, to Bank of America, it's a fake site,
and the guy goes in, and it turns out, we know the UN card number and PIN code, and since the dump can be written to this bank, no one checks anything there, like, well, you write the dump manually and go to an ATM to withdraw money, well, that's one of the ways. The second way is simple, the guys sometimes hacked databases, dumps with PIN codes.
Interviewer:
They hacked banks, right?
Pavlovich:
Yes, yes. In short, in all networks, in principle, in many, retail networks and other processing, there the card numbers and PIN codes are stored in encrypted form. According to the rules, it is not allowed to store Visa, but Visa, Master Cards, Amix. But everyone has always done it this way, they just neglected the security standards there, straight up, and that's it, they could be decrypted, that is, there were such databases.
They also hung them on banks... Well, it started in my presence, the first, probably, such a skimmer, yes, they soldered it together in my kitchen in Kiev. They made overlays on the card receiver, it goes through your overlay, well, this device is generally called a skimmer, it goes through your overlay, reads the PIN code in the device's memory, then it could be transmitted via GSM, the SIM card transmitted everything, it could be removed, well, it is advisable to remove it, because, well, what, an expensive device and an outlandish one to give to cops or bank employees.
To remove PIN codes, well PIN codes, a video camera was immediately attached somewhere on the side, which is on the keyboard, and then, well, this was already without me, I saw guys making an advanced overlay keyboard, that is, right on the keyboard where you enter the PIN code, another one is superimposed. Well, something like that.
Interviewer:
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How did you end up behind bars?
Pavlovich:
I sat for 10 years and one month. Well, that's behind the bars of a pretrial detention center, a camp. But that's more, of course. So, for about 13 years, probably, with all sorts of house arrests, chemistry. So, in short, it was about 13 years in total, probably. And I got out and realized that I wasn’t interested in it at all, that crime is a vicious circle, you go around in circles all the time, firstly, well, you make some mistakes, yes, you end up behind bars time and time again, because I was there twice, two and a half and seven and a half, let’s say.
Interviewer:
Yes, and how did it happen that you were put in jail the first time, you got out and started robbing banks again?
Pavlovich:
Well, I didn't take any action myself, I just built a scheme, people sold these dumps to me, and that's it, I was just making cash. Yes, but then they eventually put me in jail, because we had a special agent of the US Secret Service in our group. It's a unit like the FSO in Russia, they guard top officials, but in America they also investigate the most complex financial crimes, fraud, carding and everything related to money.
Now, by the way, they investigate everything with crypto as well. But there's also crime, what I don't like is that, okay, you end up behind bars time after time, but it also greatly narrows the field of your activity, because, as a rule, you move within the framework of one criminal specialty. There's a burglar who steals from apartments, a car thief who steals cars and so on. Well, there are more diverse scammers, of course, there's a set of all sorts of tools.
Well, there are probably more carders, because you do 20-30 scams a day. Somewhere they stole something from accounts, somewhere they sold something to someone, somewhere they made a phishing site, sent out a mailing, somehow got hold of pin codes there in different ways, but they still didn’t sell it all later, and I also sold all sorts of fake documents, well, EU ones, they were mainly used for moving, well, within the EU they were used because you can’t give them into your hands there, you showed them somewhere and that’s it, but otherwise
they were mainly bought to go shopping with fake cards because the sellers could ask for a passport for a big purchase, and the name there had to be the same as on the card, and they rolled out fake documents.
Interviewer:
Which you made for them.
Pavlovich:
Yes, of course, they have awesome documents there, they are just, well, give them to you, yes, if you don’t have the original in your hands, I don’t know, some British or French set, for example, German, they have, it turns out, a passport, a driver’s license and an internal ID card, in Germany they have Ausweis or something, you won’t be able to tell the difference, it was done in Bulgaria and probably still is, there is a connection with them, if I want, you won’t be able to tell that it’s a fake, only if you have a second one in your hands and you start comparing them, take two,
start comparing a magnifying glass, then you’ll probably understand that one of them is a fake, but it’s not certain, and with all this I was confused for a long time, then I was released, but the most unfair thing was that I was still wanted by Interpol because I kind of robbed America, well, Europe a little, America mainly, it turned out that I already served time for it at I had all the American episodes in my Belarusian criminal case, the Americans say, don't sit here any longer.
And I didn’t want to sit there at all, well, for the same thing a second time. And then it turned out that I managed to resolve it. I have an American lawyer, Litvak, a really cool one. He closed my case, and also closed several criminal cases for two of my relatives, right now. And that’s it. And it took me three years, right now, since we started, to close all my criminal cases.
And it turns out that they kept me in Interpol without leaving for 19 years. That is, I almost never went abroad, that is, since 2008 I haven’t been abroad at all, I was always in Belarus and Russia, because I couldn’t leave. But, thank God, Justice prevailed.
Interviewer:
Yes, I remember, we were in St. Petersburg with you, remember, we separated and then came to your hotel, there were a lot of police, Interpol, something like that in St. Petersburg.
Pavlovich:
Yes.
Interviewer:
You were still there, 2021, I think, but they couldn’t do anything to you at that time.
Pavlovich:
Well, because Russia didn’t extradite its own, or Belarusians, or anyone. There is no extradition treaty with America, so now all the fugitive cybercriminals in Russia are hanging around in the Russian Federation, even many Ukrainian ones, because Ukraine has started cooperating with the States and maybe, well, it doesn’t really like to extradite its own, it’s not legally allowed, but it can cause problems. Friends, I’ve been promoting websites for over 13 years
Interviewer:
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Why did they rob Americans and Europeans?
Interviewer:
Listen, why did you mainly rob Americans and Europeans? Or just Americans?
Pavlovich:
Well, in the CIS, cards were not developed at all, you understand? This is the maximum that was, they transferred salaries to them, and all the workers there on the day of the advance and on the day of payday at the ATM withdrew money, the cards were simply not even used. That's it. That was the problem.
Interviewer:
Yeah, there was cash.
Pavlovich:
Yes. And in the US, these are developed processing systems and everything. And naturally, in any criminal topic, the US suffers first, they get hammered, well, because they simply have something to take, and the distribution of information systems is so great that it would be a sin not to use it. But here is an important point, we need to emphasize that America does not forgive at all. Roman Polanski, a director, he was detained in Switzerland, there, about 10 years ago for some rape in the States, there, damn it, I don’t know, in the 70s.
And they, unlike Belarus, for example, have no statute of limitations, like in Belka, for example, you committed some crime, like carding, yes, let's say, like me, you hid, ran for 15 years, well, somewhere around 10, depending on the severity of the article, for example, under my article 15, and then that's it, you didn't commit new crimes, there are no new charges against you, you can close the case due to the statute of limitations, and in the States, the statute of limitations only exists for filing charges, but if the cops have already brought your charges to court, then you can run for 100 years, they will still look for you.
Well, not that they will actively look for you, but you will still fall into the clutches of American justice, most likely. That's the big difference. Therefore, it is better not to joke with the States at all, in any criminal topics, there was a case about criminal moron, remember? He was somehow inflating Google advertising, clicking on it, you know, recently, how long did they give him, 12 or how many years? He thought he was innocent, sort of, but...
Interviewer:
He simply caused financial damage to Google, and, well, they went to judge him.
Pavlovich:
Yeah, it's better not to joke around with the States at all.
How much did he earn from crime?
Interviewer:
Seryozha, okay, you were entering these cards, robbing banks, and how much did you manage to earn per month at that time? So it was some kind of crazy money?
Pavlovich:
Well, I don't know, no, well, a hundred, a hundred for that same 2003-2004, a hundred a month, well, normal, in short. A hundred a month then, I don't know, probably like 300-400 now. It wasn't bad, it wasn't bad, but at the peak of my entire criminal career I only earned about 200 million dollars. According to criminal cases, I caused 36 million in damage, but I had 200 million in total. And it's not like I had 200 million lying around there in cash, yes.
I had 200-300 thousand saved up in cash, probably always the maximum. That is, I never had 200 million in my suitcase. That is, it's spread out over time, so even 200 million, yes, I had to sit out 10 years for it, 120 thousand dollars a year. Well, I'm not ready at all.
Interviewer:
Well, it's not worth it.
Pavlovich:
100%.
Interviewer:
Well, that is, at the time you were arrested, how much money did you have left, a million two hundred left?
Pavlovich:
I don’t know, it’s hard to judge, a lot was spent on solving various issues. Well, the first time I was released, there, from prison, I had, I don’t know, two hundred thousand, probably, dollars. The second time I was released, I came to Moscow, when we met and so on, I came to Moscow with thirty thousand dollars, that’s all my money from my entire criminal career, so I had thirty thousand dollars left in my hands.
Interviewer:
Listen, but it doesn’t sound like some crazy amount of money, as if, you know, you have millions of dollars in bullion, gold, like they show in the movies, but it doesn’t look like that. Like, not so spectacular.
Pavlovich:
In different ways. Some people who are now involved in ransomware, encrypting these ransomware programs, encryptors, they have tens of millions of dollars now, 20, 50, 100. That is, you can see such amounts in their accusations. So it’s different for everyone. I didn’t have much, plus I had to do time for it.
What did you spend the stolen money on?
Interviewer:
And what did you spend it on, Seryozha?
Pavlovich:
Well, all kinds of branded clothes. Watches, clothes, phones, back then all kinds of mobile phones were starting to appear. The trendy, there, Siemens SL45, probably the trendiest one had an MP3 player. What else? Well, all kinds of Vertus, yes, some of us had them. I didn’t have a Vertu. Cars, of course, little cars, chicks and trips somewhere to Europe, there, to the Maldives and so on, yes.
The hype of carding vs. the hype of arbitrage.
Interviewer:
Parties and so on, right? Listen, can you compare the hype arbitrageurs now, like these "Beautiful Life", "Parties", "Lamby" and the like, and carders, when you were doing it, it was also on the hype, it looked like an elite, like, damn, these are some kind of rich, incomprehensible guys connected with IT. Can you compare this, the hype of carding and the hype of arbitrage now?
Pavlovich:
No, you can't compare, because we were still in the shadows, you know, you walk around under a criminal case every day, and not under one, and in one country. That's why we already really, well, hung out, of course, met somewhere, but these were all some kind of closed parties just for our own, and not that numerous, there were 5-10 people in different countries or went on vacation somewhere together, but we didn't have anything like now, of course. But in any case, we tried not to attract unnecessary attention to ourselves.
Why shouldn't you go into crime now?
Interviewer:
You know, we are probably watched by many young people who read telegrams, they have applications installed, and now the Darknet and all sorts of gray topics are very hyped. From the height of your experience, including criminal, is it worth going into these topics, or would you not advise it?
Pavlovich:
Well, I wouldn't advise it now, that is, in my time, several circumstances simply came together. We were extremely poor, yes, all residents of the former USSR. Secondly, we had no moral principles at all, our parents didn't instill in us from childhood, most of us, that there was no respect for other people's private property first of all. That is, they said that stealing is a sin, but they didn't explain why. Now, well, in principle, it's clear, yes, why.
That is, any of you can answer the question of why stealing is bad, right? For example, I can, just put yourself in their place, tomorrow you come to an ATM, there you need, I don't know, to withdraw money for plane tickets, let's say, to pay for medicine for your child. You come there to withdraw your grand, or like I had it in a restaurant recently, a couple of years ago, I come, I know I have 50 thousand rubles on my card, a new card, and a fresh one at that, I'm going to pay,
but there's nothing there, that is, someone stole all this money from me, I still don't understand.
Interviewer:
Come on, did the carders rip you off?
Pavlovich:
Yeah, well, that happened, yeah. A Kiwi bank card, I replaced it in Moscow, a brand new card, that's it, I came to Sochi with it, to Polyana, I pay at a restaurant, and there was no money there, and the card was always in my pocket, and the only thing is, I know that I linked it to Booking, but I didn't pay with it. I don't think it left Booking. Most likely, it left through Kiwi by some method, through their management.
Interviewer:
Maybe it was a phishing booking?
Pavlovich:
No, well, I'll figure out whether it was phishing or not.
Interviewer:
Yes, it's hard to scam you, but it still happens.
Pavlovich:
Nevertheless, it happens. So, basically, put yourself in the place of me, would I want to be robbed like that, no. Well, that's it, and in principle the moral side is clear, and so it all came together, yes, there was no money, there was no respect for other people's private property, there were computers, well, and somehow it all happened. Now, of course, I wouldn't do it that way, because it's much more comfortable for me to be in business, especially since I have a bunch of projects, yes, and there is a synergy between them, between other people, between you and everyone.
That is, I pull parts of my other project from one project, somewhere we partnered with someone, that is, in business the head works in different directions, I like it every day, there is no stagnation. It's like they say that older people should, well, constantly have their brains working, guess some crossword puzzles, sudoku and so on. And then, like, well, an active lifestyle, you don't age, but that's how it is with me now, it seems I'm not ageing, 42.
Was it easier to engage in crime before?
Interviewer:
And you look good. Listen, as far as I understand, young people go into cybercrime because they have no money and there is no good example nearby that there is another way.
Pavlovich:
Well, back then there were no opportunities. Here we need to add a third. Back then there were no opportunities like there are now. Now, I don’t know, as a freelancer you can easily earn your one and a half to two thousand. By helping someone with something in some white gray topics, getting a job as a copywriter, designers, editors. Our editors earn 2-3 thousand dollars, 4, probably, some even earn here in our holding.
Interviewer:
We also pay well for videos, you can definitely earn a thousand dollars easily. You know, we won’t have motion design in this podcast, where you and I are flying in 3D. You don’t need to have some super motion design skills. So yes, you can definitely earn money. And what was it like in the 90s? There was some market, you could trade there, if the bandit wasn't killed, yes, and there was an entrance to the world of computers, that's it, the end. By the way, I also have a story about how I was, so to speak, robbed in the early 2000s.
There was a popular public page on VKontakte, called Yasart, I don't remember why they called it that, there were memes, there was a lot of audience. And at one point the admin disappeared, and, in general, the name of the public was dropped. And I go in in the morning, register it and take it for myself, and people start subscribing en masse. And it, so you understand, is like an 18+ axe now, some kind of back then. I just take it from my VK account, and, apparently, some friends of this admin, it's not clear why he disappeared, or interested parties who did this to him, yes, they start writing to me, give me the public, I say, like, go to hell.
And I had websites back then, I was making some traffic, selling links, there, under SIOshka, something else. That was right at the beginning of my career, it was probably the eighth year. They don't do anything.
Oleg's story about cyber robbery.
Interviewer:
Do you remember, there used to be a website "nomer.org", where anyone could check a Moscow number. It was a really open database. You can check all the registration information for free on the Internet, like now "God's Eye".
By the way, "God's Eye" is an excellent service that works in Telegram, you can enter any phone number and check your debtors, friends or ill-wishers. Look what they have for you. They check my mother's maiden name there, go to the domain registrar that I supposedly have, and just take the panel with all my domains, write to me, like, give us a public page, otherwise we won't give you the domains.
There was some story, that we checked, that these were students from the neighboring dormitory, well, like we found, like, we checked, sent them the data in a personal message and just there, let's say, by force decided that they didn't want to anymore, they couldn't write, let's say, manually for some time. Well, I mean, that the guys just dropped my mother's maiden name as a secret question, found how to do it, and I think, and there were a shitload of domains, this public page is not worth, like, and 5 percent. That's how I was robbed once, the guys are cunning.
So don't put a secret question, your mother's maiden name, because in the eye of God, for example, it will be definitely visible, and they will simply reset all your passwords.
Pavlovich:
Well, from the eye of God 130 x, now on referral this month.
Secret tattoo.
Interviewer:
Yeah, and don't fall for any scams, don't romance with people on the internet you don't know, they could have taken me away altogether. My question is, is it true that you have an American Express tattoo on your arm?
Pavlovich:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard to see here, but this Centurion, yeah, I don't know, you can see it on camera, Centurion, American Express, the emblem, yeah.
Interviewer:
Cool. You did that because you stole a lot of American Express cards, so you got it tattooed, right?
Pavlovich:
No, American Express, they didn't work well in Europe and Russia, and I just like this Centurion, their logo, so I got it tattooed and I've already signed it. American Express, maybe they'll charge you some dough for advertising now.
Interviewer:
Yeah, right now all sorts of Dodo Pizza and others have done a promotion for a lifetime pizza for getting a logo tattooed somewhere on your hand or in a visible place, so you can write to them and say I'm your long-time fan, so to speak, a long-time fan, your influencer, right?
Pavlovich:
They'll remember, they'll remember other cards where I used American Express, a couple more things will be added, it can't get any better.
How did they catch you?
Interviewer:
Yeah, it's better not to write to them. Listen, and such, briefly, here's the story of how you were caught, they were secret service agents, where did they catch you? Did special forces come into the apartment, or where were you at that time?
Pavlovich:
I was constantly being caught in Belarus, yes, Belarusian cops, the KGB, well, on tips from all sorts of Americans, yes, well, and not only. My stepfather turned me in there, something idiotic. We were shopping with cards in Belarus, not very successfully. I think that was the first time I got caught, well, with fake ones, they were caught on video cameras and so on. And so the first case was opened against me because of that. Well, I was walking without any masks, they detained me the first time at my dacha, the second time right at home.
In short, the cops and the special services, they have this thing, they like to come in the morning, but at 6 in the morning, at 7 in the morning, but at 6.30, when you're sleeping, and, in principle, it's easier for Spetsprosony to take a person, he's still inhibited, doesn't think clearly, can't destroy evidence. And they come now too, but they don't come now. I live in another country now, thank God.
And then they like to come, especially to me for some reason. I haven't been involved in crime for a long time, but they still come and come, come and come. I put up a sign, there, well, I hand it over here.
Interviewer:
And don't call, there's none here, if they don't give you money.
Pavlovich:
Yeah, what do they hand over here on Thursdays, fuck. Well, don't go there every day.
Meeting with American special service agents.
Interviewer:
Listen, did you eventually talk to those Secret Service agents, I think you had some kind of communication with them, yes, with the Americans, when they took you?
Pavlovich:
No, I talked to them later, when I wanted to resolve my case there. But they offered such conditions that it wasn’t really, like, they said, well, we’re not really interested in you, but come to the States for a couple of years, like, 2-3 years, a year or two or three without naming specific dates, work for us, help us out a little, and we’ll, like, help you close the case. But, again, they always added that there were no guarantees, it was a court case, the judge would decide, and so on.
And I kind of talked to everyone, but somehow I didn’t feel like going to the States under those conditions. It would be fine if I were still alone, but I just got released, yes, plus I got a family, and that's it, and screw it.
The difference between a good and a bad prison.
Interviewer:
No, that's right. Better through the legal channel remotely, so that they could record such podcasts with you. I wanted to ask a couple of interesting questions about prison. In prison, you served, it seems to me, in very different conditions, from the best, coolest to the most terrible, in some top-2 shitty zone in Russia. What is the difference in these zones and how much does it cost to sit in a good one?
Pavlovich:
In order for you to have a mobile phone, you had to drink tea. Only in Belarus, not in Russia. But, in fact, they are, I repeat, Russian zones, only not so harsh, there, these mops and so on, there was nothing like that in Belka. Well, often, probably, there are a lot of political prisoners, but before there were none. Well, what is the difference? I served in the best zone in the country, and in one of the worst. And there are simply cardinal differences.
Black zones, you know how it works, that the prisoners are on their own, like, well, do whatever you want there, phones, okay, do whatever you want, managed to sneak in, don't get caught there, call, do whatever you want, vodka, drugs and so on. But don't create problems for us, that is, the cops, don't create problems, like you have your own movement, we have ours, like mutual respect and that's it. And everything is fine there.
Interviewer:
You don't rebel, you don't cause riots?
Pavlovich:
Well, by the way, they don't like vodka very much, they often turned a blind eye to the grass, and they don't like vodka very much, because, well, the majority of people in the world, yes, let's admit that they don't know how to drink, probably 80, 90 percent, probably, and they become aggressive, violent, and what difference does it make whether you drink behind bars or outside, if you don't know how to drink, you're the same idiot there and there, that's why vodka often causes all sorts of riots, well, not riots, fights with knives, there are fistfights, that's why the cops especially.
Interviewer:
Yes, someone made a claim against someone, it started, and a brawl began, and they just don't want to sort it out, right?
Pavlovich:
Well, vodka, for example, if you have some kind of pocket cop, let's say, in a pretrial detention center or in a zone, yes, you kill him, you pay him, you help him with something, you help his family, you send him on vacation once a year, he can, you know, bring you a cell phone, let's say, well, I just go, some home phone from home, I carry it with me, and he can bring you a phone, and sometimes even some weed, yes, but he will refuse to bring vodka. Well, it's like that, not everyone has such opportunities.
How much does it cost?
Interviewer:
So you say that there you can, like, have someone you know there from the administration. How much does it really cost?
Pavlovich:
Well, it varies. It depends on where. For example, well, a pretrial detention center is one story. There, maybe you will pay one and a half, two, five thousand dollars for them to bring you a cell phone. Yes, maybe you'll pay twenty there. Well, the maximum is probably ten thousand. I hear about it now in all sorts of Russian prisons, well, not prisons, but pretrial detention centers. In a cheaper prison, we had a standard fee, the road cost 50 dollars, to bring a phone. Sometimes, well, and more expensive, but in our prison they sold phones right there, that's what's good.
They rejected one, you went and bought a second one right there yourself.
Interviewer:
That is, it was a kind of light prison, there was a tough one, where the administration searched everything.
Pavlovich:
Well, it's tough, but you know what's fundamentally different, they constantly screw with your brain there. That is, you wake up at 6 in the morning, try there at 6-10, maybe the controller will come in already, and you're still lying there, there's a violation of the isolation ward, goodbye, amnesty and so on. That is, they constantly keep you in a nervous state, from morning until night, from 6 in the morning until 22, and they constantly nag you for not shaving. I saw a friend of mine, his stubble grows quickly, he shaved in the morning, well, it was fucking impossible not to shave, they'd fuck you right away.
But the violation, the report, the isolation ward, that's it, I mean, not in the literal sense. Then he comes from the industrial zone, his stubble grows quickly, they pull him, like why didn't he shave. So he shaved in the morning, a hundred witnesses that he shaved in the morning, they simply wouldn't let him into the industrial zone. And that's it, and they drag him out, and the violation, he's not shaved. Well, in short, it's such nonsense, you know, you're constantly being pulled over some little things, like a trained monkey in a cage, and that's it, and it, in short, hits your nervous system hard.
That's why the zone, let it be naked, bossy and cheerful, yes, than all clean and renovated, but where you'll live according to the regime, there, I don't know, it really shakes your nervous system. I remember, already in my sixth year, I was already going crazy, I already understood that somewhere, just a little bit, and this attic would explode in me. I walked around the local area near my barracks. Well, the zone is divided into local areas by fences, so that you don't wander around the entire zone back and forth without permission from the cops, without some kind of passage, yes, which could be done in different ways.
Songs that helped not to go crazy in prison.
Pavlovich:
I walked around this local area, humming four specific songs. I think they helped me stay sane. I still listen to them. I have these songs in a separate playlist. I'll send them to you, then you can create a playlist. With the song that helped a person stay sane. We need to send these artists some money, or a couple hundred dollars each.
Why were you transferred to a bad prison?
Interviewer:
To donate, yes. Listen, why did they put you in such a zone? Were you rowdy in a normal one, or are they just transferring you?
Pavlovich:
Well, there are different reasons. Somewhere there's some kind of conflict, somewhere for operational reasons, somewhere your accomplices come to the same zone, there, they need to separate you, and so on, in short.
Interviewer:
They should take you, right?
Pavlovich:
Yes. Well, do you know what's the saddest thing in Belarusian zones? Now almost all political prisoners go through this. There is an article that has survived from Soviet times, completely fucked up, barbaric, called 411. It's like if you constantly violate the order of serving your sentence, violate, refuse to clean the toilet because the roosters clean, I don't know, a button is not fastened, well, they will find something to write about.
He didn't say hello that way, not by name and patronymic, he just said Petrovich. Well, in short, they will always find something to pick on, and it implies that they can judge you, this is a new criminal case, a new trial, a new zone, you will definitely be transferred to a new zone after that, and they constantly add a year to your sentence up to one year, and if your article is serious or especially serious, then they can add up to two years, and not limited. That is, I met guys, one of the ten took twenty, they added two years to him five times, one guy, he had a term of one year there, I think he served seven or eight, they twisted him six or seven times, adding a year, that is, this is the saddest thing.
And another sad thing about behind bars is that in principle in our post-Soviet countries, yes, it is like this everywhere, not only behind bars, that the law applies only to citizens, against citizens. It doesn't concern those in power at all, neither the cops, nor the prosecutors, no one. They twist the law as they please, unfortunately. And it's the same behind bars, and you feel this, well, complete injustice, and you can't do anything about it.
That's why it's perceived even more negatively and exaggeratedly behind bars.
Myths about prison.
Interviewer:
And by the way, what of what you heard, let's say, in folklore about prison turned out to be true, that you once ended up there? Well, like, all these rumors, jokes.
Pavlovich:
Well, I don't know what folklore you're talking about, I once watched an NTV series, a prison one, it was called "The Zone". Well, it was more about pretrial detention centers, actually. But there was some real horror there, that they planted people with active tuberculosis in cells, there, in order to infect you, and so on.
Well, it's like I just haven't seen anything like that, yes, such brutal stuff, and I thought that in that series, you had a lot of fiction in it, and then you read all those Russian cases, someone was raped by a mop, someone else was raped, etc., etc., and you understand that, well, putting a tuberculosis patient in with healthy guys is absolutely no trouble at all, so it's probably all true. Even what seems, at first glance, some kind of absolute wildness, it can happen at any moment.
What is the correct way to enter a hut?
Interviewer:
Got it, got it. This is, of course, sad. Well, here's the question, a special question from our producer Stasik, actually, how to enter a hut correctly? I don't know why Stasik is interested in this, but...
Pavlovich:
Well, let him practice. It's just that anyone in the post-Soviet space needs to know the answer to this question, yes. Well, how do you enter? So what if you enter? You usually have a mattress in your hands. Mattress, sheets, pillow, spoon, mug, all that stuff. And your own bag, for example. If there was time to pack or relatives gave the Air Force something. And you come in with this stuff, went into the hut, said hello, asked where to throw the cotton wool, all this stuff.
In Russia it's called a roll. It's just rolled up, tied with a sheet, and you carry it in your hands. In our country it's called wadding. A simple wadding mattress. That's where you should throw the wadding, that's all. You asked who was responsible for the huts, went up to the person in charge, chatted, talked. Well, they'll invite you themselves, find out what article you're charged with, when you arrived, what news you're having on the outside.
Because some people have been in prison for a long time, a year, two, three, and a newbie, you can talk, have some new experiences. If you're normal, they'll pull you in, brew some chifers or just drink some tea, coffee, chat and that's it. If you're some kind of devil, they'll tell you you'll sleep there, clean the hut, well, okay. In short, that's not the worst thing, not the worst thing.
Interviewer:
Well, that is, if you are a normal guy, then it is not like in the movies, you show, you go in, there are 10 people pressing you right away. If you are a normal guy, communicate normally, then everything will be fine.
Pavlovich:
Well, most likely, yes. That is, it is unlikely that old men will throw themselves into the press hut to break you, to get something out of you, some testimony. This happens, but it is such a rarity. Therefore, you should not be afraid to go into the hut. The main thing is not to lie, because the cell system is constantly in sight, somewhere there are such lynxes who have already been there for 20-30 years, and they know how to compare facts. If you said something six months ago, then in six months, two years, or ten years they can remember it.
And what did you say then? So where is the truth? You lied to us, and so on. Therefore, it is better not to lie there, there is such an expression, to put on airs, not to exaggerate, not to fib, in short, well, as it is, that's it.
What interesting people did you meet in prison?
Interviewer:
As in life in general, should you behave like that? Listen, did you meet interesting people in prison, any unique ones? Who do you remember?
Pavlovich:
Yes, I met them, I met a lot, and, basically, I was friends with all sorts of organized crime members, there, organized crime leaders, there, well, with those and non-leaders too, but who occupied some kind of high position in the groups, Well, because they are basically all adults, yes, all with money, with connections and with whom there is something to talk about, smart, well-read, as it were, that's it. And I am friends with many people from there, and I help them, and some have already been released.
Well, one of my friends was released last year, he was behind the farm from the medical unit, he was constantly helping me, well, in a number of different issues. And another one is being released in September, well. Well, different. Basically, of course, in the maximum security zone they are mostly, damn, 90 percent of all sorts of assholes and figuratively, if there is an earthquake tomorrow and they all die, yes, she is a little cynical, but on earth it will only get better, damn, because, well, they are absolutely so adapted to life, people who want nothing, who give nothing to the world, 90 percent.
10% are normal, in the general zone for first-timers this ratio is better, but in general, the majority of them, you could say directly, frankly, are the dregs of society, probably 80-90% of them are in the maximum security zone.
Interviewer:
These are murderers, robbers, bandits, violent crimes, these are the people we are talking about, right?
Pavlovich:
No, now they are mainly in prison for drugs, you know, wherever it is. They are mainly in prison for drugs, and there are few murderers. Murderers, they, what a paradox, are all fighting against weed, against drugs, yes, mainly. And the murderers are in prison, well, alcohol is sold everywhere, and 90% of all murderers, that's what I met, 95, probably, they are just such everyday people against the background of alcohol.
Someone does not even remember in the morning what happened, yes, what happened.
How did you write a book in prison?
Interviewer:
Listen, how were you able to write a book while in prison, and publish it, and hand it in? It came out when you were still in prison, right?
Pavlovich:
Yes, it came out in 2013, and I was released in the spring of 2016. Well, I wrote and wrote, you know, I sent it to the outside world in all sorts of ways, I wrote something on my phone. I had a Nokia N97, with a slide-out keyboard, like a small laptop, it was absolutely superb.
Interviewer:
An Encage, like a gaming one, that’s like it’s not there?
Pavlovich:
Well, it folds out like a laptop, the keyboard slides out, it’s a really, really cool phone, actually, it’s top-notch, probably the best thing Nokia makes, the N97. I wrote a lot from it, I sent it by email, then, when I basically had the book ready, I spent, what, three years, three or three and a half writing, I sent it all over. Then they typed my drafts, my typed texts, handwritten drafts, they put it all together for me to proofread, I proofread it myself and contacted the publishers, selected about six of them via the Internet with my mobile phone, wrote to them, and one of them, the Piter publishing house, directly told me, thank them very much, said, yes, let's print everything, and my mother, I think, signed the contract with them instead of me, and everything was ok, the book came out. And then they bothered me in the new zone, there is a deputy corporor, well, this is a deputy for operational work, but in the zone in fact this is the first person, because the owner, the head of the zone, the boss, he is like the British queen, more of a decorative position, he receives awards and constantly gets beat up.
And the deputy for operational work controls the entire situation in the zone, who breathes what, who needs to be promoted, who, on the contrary, needs help. And in Russia he was something like, we called him Zamporor, and in Russia he was something like Bor, well, something like that, Bor, I don’t know what it stands for. So, he pulls me, says, from the isolation ward, I was right in the isolation ward in Bura for three months. He pulls, and how did it happen that you wrote me a book from the ministry, they write there, fucking hell, they sent a request for you to answer.
I say, well, I didn't write for you about that, well, I wrote with a cell phone, I've already served my time with a cell phone, he's still sitting in solitary confinement. And that's it, and he calmed down, he says, oh, not for us, well, like, everything was great then. Well, that's it, and somehow, somehow, he made friends with me, in any case, he didn't do anything bad, and in that zone it was when they didn't do anything bad to you, it was, well, you could say, it was a really strong friendship. Well, that's it, and I was released.
Interviewer:
That's exactly the creepy one that was, right?
Pavlovich:
Well, yes.
Were you popular in the zone?
Interviewer:
And, by the way, did that book make you famous in the zone, did the other prisoners know that, oh, look, there, dude, that carder who robbed Amerikosovsky?
Pavlovich:
Yes, yes, of course. And there were all these articles in the newspapers. Well, she was a genius. And now she is read in every prison, in every pretrial detention center, in many departments, in law universities, in the academies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, they teach about her. And in the prisons they read her until they are tired, there are queues for her. And sometimes, you know, to some of my friends, acquaintances who end up in prison, well, everywhere, there, in the former Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, okay, Belarus, there, Russia.
Sometimes I sign them like that, well, with such a respectful text, so as to give them a little authority right from the start, and everyone there already goes, the author of the book is like that.
Interviewer:
Holy shit, like Pavlovich wrote it there. By the way, let's raffle off the books at the end of the episode.
Pavlovich:
Yeah, let's.
Interviewer:
So watch to the end, Seryozha will sign it. Let's play backgammon. By the way, I don't know how to play backgammon. Do you, I suppose? I can play chess.
Pavlovich:
I know a little, but I mean, when normal guys play, they go straight there, yeah, I can't, I count like this, like this, like this, like this, well, I count under the holes, well, it's okay, not that bad.
How did you write 150 business plans in prison?
Interviewer:
Anyway, let's play it out, watch until the end. Yeah, you know, we were talking, right when we first met, you were still starting your channel, you said that you wrote about 40 business plans in prison. So you were sitting there and you weren't just sitting there, drinking chifir, and you were thinking about what you would do later when you were free. I think you wrote about 40, right? How did you do it? Where did you get your ideas from?
Pavlovich:
I think more. There are probably about 150 of them. I just, realizing that I’m unlikely to implement them all due to a number of different circumstances, yes, I once filmed one video about business on my channel and scanned all this handwritten stuff there and posted it in a package. There, different ideas were worked out in different areas, both online and offline, to varying degrees of elaboration. Well, I read on the Internet, there were no Telegram channels of any kind back then, well, I read all sorts of cool websites about business and so on.
And I read a lot, especially in that zone where mobile was already equated, I don’t know, with terrorism, I read a lot of magazines there, that is, I subscribed to 20-30 different magazines, really 20-30. They are diverse, there is popular mechanics, and GQ, and Playboy, to look at chicks, and about computers, and about mobile applications, some phones, Men's Health, something else, hunting, fishing.
Interviewer:
Did Hacker subscribe?
Pavlovich:
No, I didn't. Well, I don't have a technical mindset, I'm more of a humanities person, and I wasn't really interested in it. Well, I read a bit when I was free, yes, earlier, but there, no, I didn't subscribe.
Interesting business ideas from cellmates.
Interviewer:
Yes, it would be strange if you subscribed. He wants to hack someone again, they thought. Okay, so you got information from websites, magazines and as a result you came out with a bunch of plans, let's say. Listen, has it ever happened that a cellmate, some kind of swindler, let's say, on economics, who tells some story and you're like, op, you can make a white business out of this on the outside?
Pavlovich:
Well, yes, they have. It's interesting to talk to swindlers in general, but the kind, you know, whose damages amount to a million dollars or more, let's say. They're really well-versed in all sorts of topics. I've heard about shared construction, a lot of different schemes, like those that can be used white, naturally, like at the excavation stage, like selling a house, yes, and then building with the same money. But this isn't a common story, because there are still really interesting people there, if you take that percentage in a pretrial detention center, in the zone, well, out of 100 people, probably 2-3, well, 5, probably 5 percent maximum, let's say so.
The main conclusions after 10 years in prison.
Interviewer:
But there is still someone to talk to, to emphasize something interesting. Listen, let's share the main conclusions after 10 years in prison. How did it change you, perhaps? What new attitudes did you leave with?
Pavlovich:
The main conclusions are that there is no point in engaging in crime when there are now tons of opportunities in the legal sphere. It takes up your time. That's okay, I had the opportunity to pay for something somewhere, and a phone, and so on. Somehow I can't say outright that I fell behind in the zone. That is, I was deprived of, in essence, freedom of movement, but any other freedom to think, develop, read, I naturally had it.
But most people won't have that. And it turns out that for a person this is simply wasted time, right? And time is kind of very expensive, a priceless resource, but non-renewable. In some places you can even improve your health if you have money, in the absence of bad habits - no problem. But with time, everything is different, and this must be appreciated, because every day we are getting closer to death.
These are probably the main conclusions. Well, and not to engage in crime for another reason, if your family is dear to you, especially if it's children, parents and everything else, because it's a really big experience for them, even much more than for you.
What was the plan after prison?
Interviewer:
Golden words, you could say. Good conclusions for the lost, well, 10 years of freedom, not lost lives, but definitely freedom. You know what's interesting, so the prison doors closed behind you, you found yourself free, and what was the plan next? Where did you go next, drove, or friends met you, then you got out, that's it, you were free.
Pavlovich:
The plan was to quickly leave Belarus somewhere, because I understood that I would be sitting there all the time, they would be watching me, where I would make a mistake and I don't know at all, or I would figuratively give a bribe to a traffic cop so that he wouldn't take away my license. Well, for example, yes, and understanding all this, I'm not saying that it's good to bribe the traffic cops there, but I'm figuratively speaking for example, I understood that my life there would not be calm, and somewhere either I would back down, or they would make some kind of provocation, as already happened, and that's it, and that's why I
immediately left for Moscow, I had 30 thousand dollars left of my money, but I was already making my cashback, Secret Discounter, and I attracted 1100, probably, more dollars there, so I left with thirty of my own, well, I knew that I would have another 1100. But this financing there one investor let us down, and it turned out to be spread out over several years, well, it's not quite the same effect, but in the end we did everything, everything works. Well, really, I put in many times more of my own money there than even the attracted investors.
I came, I mean, well, to implement some very specific plans that I thought out in prison.
How did you come up with your cashback service?
Interviewer:
So you came up with cashback while you were still in prison?
Pavlovich:
Yes, yes. I didn't know that such a thing existed, I thought I was such an innovator, yes, in the world, and an innovator, but it turns out that there, since 1998, cashbacks have been working in the States, and I got the idea, I just poured adult, porn via referral links, I earn a lot on this back in the day, something else, something else there, casinos, betting, I don't remember, in short, some kind of farm, in short, all sorts of...
Interviewer:
In those old days, yes, before prison.
Pavlovich:
Yes, I was pouring all sorts of Internet crap there using spam, and I saw that I had commissions, huge ones, I was paid 70% of referrals, let's say 60-70, not uncommon, and I thought, what if I just roll back part of this money, huge ones, to people so that they constantly buy through me, and that's it, and I thought that I should do this. I didn't know what cashback was called then, but I did it, kind of vulgarly, connected online stores to myself and offline ones, we'll probably start connecting now.
Everything has been developed for a long time, but there is no time for this.
Where did the idea to start a YouTube channel come from?
Interviewer:
Well, we'll leave the link to the cashback, Seryozha, of course, in the description. Such a great project, with which Sergey started, cannot be left unadvertised. Listen, how did you decide to make a YouTube channel? You got out of prison, you're making this cashback project. Why YouTube? How did you even come to YouTube?
Pavlovich:
I certainly knew YouTube, what kind of company it was, what year it was founded, and even how much it was sold to Google for at the time. But it never really interested me. I watched YouTube all the time before 2018. I watched a couple of videos on it about how they pump up the press and a couple of Lady Gaga clips. That's all I watched on YouTube before 2017. And then a friend from Sweden calls me and says, look, Transformer made an episode about your competitors in cashback.
I watched it, it was cool, I called him and asked how much it would cost to make one about me. They told me they wanted to make the same thing, they said the price was 45 thousand dollars, I decided that it was kind of humiliatingly high, yes, and that if I get any registrations, there, leads and from there, then each one will cost. Well, I calculated about 500 dollars, at a fair price, there, I don't know, half a dollar. And I realized that I would never buy these investments. Well, and in the end I decided to make my own channel in the conversational genre, and all sorts of interviews, because I had already trained myself a little to write dialogues in a book, yes.
When you write a book, you need to liven it up with more dialogues, so that the characters could interact with each other. And I thought that you could do the same thing, in principle, on YouTube. Well, I tried, and in a year I had how many for the first? Well, more than a hundred thousand subscribers.
The first guest on the People Pro podcast.
Interviewer:
Who was the first to come to your podcast? Who was on the first episode?
Pavlovich:
The first one is my friend, now Vanya Mironov, a lawyer. He was in prison once, and a jury acquitted him. He is now working as a lawyer for the attempted murder of Chubais, a high-profile case happened there in the early 2000s. And so he wrote a book walled up in prison, a cool book about Moscow prisons. And I liked it, I am still reading this book, I think even an article, not the book itself, but an article about it in Komsomolskaya Pravda.
I think, a cool guy, I wish I could meet him someday. And then I came to Moscow, and he writes to me a year later there, I had a bunch of interviews in the press, on TV. And he writes, I work there as a lawyer, I am such and such, that is, there is a question, can you consult. Well, we met, got acquainted and that's it, we still communicate. So he was the first, then a couple of hacker acquaintances, well, somehow it slowly went on.
With what episode did the channel take off?
Interviewer:
And what episode was the first to take off so that your channel started to be recognized? How did it all start, that the channel started to grow wildly?
Pavlovich:
There was an episode about drugs with Kladman, and his YouTube somehow unexpectedly threw in right with a recommendation, there was a lot of traffic and it brought in 2000 subscribers a day, that meant somewhere, I don’t know, 10-15 videos on my channel approximately and that’s all, but Russian surveillance quickly banned it because of the topic, but my passion woke up, I realized I don’t know, there were about 30 thousand subscribers on the channel, that’s somewhere around the 6th month
of the channel, probably the 8th month of the channel, and so it turns out that I had 1015 before that the video became 1030, 40 probably, and now over the summer, in June it took off, and by September there were more than 100 thousand subscribers for the first time, that is, in a year, yes, more than a hundred.
Interviewer:
I remember that episode, a man in a mask, either a clown or something like that, blue-red-white, yeah, and after that video they started sending me your videos, my best friend says, oh, look, check out what a cool channel has appeared, and I started watching all the episodes, well, in general it’s, well, such, let’s say, journalism, such a format was new on YouTube, no one was doing it, especially in some topic, like the Internet, earnings, some kind of dirt.
Well, I just started watching you. You see, that is, such a video, let’s say, fateful for the channel, which gave you the motivation to continue doing this. I had such a video about Argentina, if you remember, I was filming such a mini-film, such a documentary, and when we launched the channel with your help, I had, I remember, 5600 subscribers. After this video I immediately got 19,000, right away. Holy shit. I was going to those 5-600, well, 15 episodes, probably.
Pavlovich:
It's cool. YouTube gives traffic to the patient, that is, YouTube is not a sprint, but a marathon, that is, you have to get ready to work, for a long time it seems to you that nothing is working out, that your videos deserve more views and subscribers. Well, it rewards, as it were, the patient, little by little throwing up some videos. For me, for 6 years, in September the channel will be 6 years old already. It happened four times that it threw up videos and they got a lot of traffic with a recommendation. The last one there recently was Wagnervets, who has 1.4 million now, also mostly without injuries precisely from recommendations.
But this is an uncommon story, but you have to believe in it and work on your mistakes, because if you've been doing the same thing for, I don't know, a year or two and nothing is working out, then you probably need to draw some conclusions. But there are also statistics that are global among YouTube bloggers, that in the first year people who try hard gain a thousand subscribers in the first year. In the second year they can reach ten thousand, and in the third year there can already be exponential growth.
Therefore, if you have gained a thousand subscribers in a year or ten in two, then you should not be upset, this is how you are within the framework of global statistics, nothing to worry about.
Interviewer:
100%, because in the first years of the channel, that is, the first year, I probably have a two and a half year old channel, I was happy that I had 10 people a day, and now hundreds of people come, mostly Sharts, really, yes, hundreds of people, subscribers a day, and when our Sharts with Nikita Anufriev threw in, a thousand a day came. So, friends, if you are making a YouTube channel, make videos, improve them, editing, sound, packaging, quality, and every day you will have more and more subscribers, and everything will be fine.
Pavlovich:
In fact, this is bullshit. This editing, sound, packaging. Well, sound, yes, should be important, because many do not even watch, especially interviews, you know, they listen in the background somewhere in the car. I often do the same. Sound, yes, but there is shooting, editing, it's all bullshit. It seems like you work on some video, I don't know, a month, two or three, it seems to you that it will take off, there is really expensive shooting, expensive editing, a lot of time and energy spent on it, but it doesn't take off.
At the same time, I don't know, I have an iPhone, I was sometimes too lazy to go to the studio in Moscow, I hung an external microphone, turned on the iPhone and that's it, without light, without anything, just filmed at home. That is, the most important thing is stories, some interesting lives. If you have a background, well, something to tell, that's the first point. And the second, the heroes you call, if you have a channel about business or some interviews.
Stories are more important, more important than videos and pictures, that is, definitely.
Interviewer:
Of course, yes. Well, you see, if we take not the podcast format, but the format of expert videos, a talking head, I still think that the dynamics of editing, throw out everything boring, what is so-so, leave the meat, yes, how to make the editing dynamic, here it can greatly affect retention. And podcasts, of course, if you invite uninteresting people, or you yourself do not know how to conduct a dialogue, open up, ask questions, then it will not go.
In general, by the way, podcasts, well, a complex format, one of the most complex on YouTube, it seems to me, documentaries are not that complex, I am used to it, it is simple and that's it.
Pavlovich:
Isn't it easier, you and I can even talk, I can watch my own business, that is, well, communicate, that is, you essentially have to be silent, just a lead-in question, that is, for me it is the easiest, that is, even filming one episode when I myself am telling something takes much more preparation.
Interviewer:
It certainly does. We have an agency channel. It can take me 4 hours to write a script, 4 hours to release an 8-minute video. How many people are working on your channel now? What team?
How many people are working on the YouTube channel?
Pavlovich:
Well, there are probably 3 editors, 3-4 editors, we have 3, probably. One makes a long video, the second, when the first one doesn’t have time, and one shortcuts, makes TikToks. Well, probably 3-4 editors, but they all get paid, well, piecework, you know, based on the number of minutes. Then the person who uploads, one person on scripts. That is, he, well, probably 6-7 people.
Interviewer:
Well, not such a huge production team, I would say. You know how to make compressed teams that...
Pavlovich:
Yes, and also a cameraman, a cameraman. Well, in short, eight. Eight at most.
Interviewer:
And how much do you earn from your YouTube channel?
Pavlovich:
I don’t earn any money at all. They turned off monetization, they turned off monetization in Russia, and that’s it, I don’t earn anything at all. I had 8 thousand dollars before the war, yes, a month, well, it was just from coins. It was enough for a couple of salaries, for the office. And now they’re gone. Now, at best, a thousand dollars a month. Well, advertising my products still saves me, like advertising for the same “Eye of God” via referrals and, well, all sorts of integrations.
We’ve come up with a lot. You need money, after all, the number of episodes is limited. I’ve been filming, for 6 years now, yes, 2-3 episodes a week. It’s like, well, a lot of work, even if you count the number of episodes.
Interviewer:
Enormous.
Pavlovich:
Advertisers seem to want money, but I can’t shoot more, well, for obvious reasons. That’s why we came up with all sorts of other formats. I’m sitting in a brand sweater, we also have a TV on it, a sign, a brand logo, and a neon sign under the TV. And you seem to watch, the episode is the same, but you have a lot more advertising formats in it. You can sell at least these three formats that I mentioned, plus direct integration, plus you can sell someone’s pre-roll, plus a second integration there at the 10-15 minute mark, and in the end you watch, it seems like you have one episode, but they pay for it 6-7 times.
You also advertise your own products indirectly, and so on from time to time, well, it’s normal.
Unique ways to monetize a YouTube channel.
Interviewer:
Cool model, when I talk to you, with Vlad, we'll also talk about Vlad, you uniquely monetize the YouTube channel on Russian-language YouTube, that is, no one has plasma, or a logo under the plasma, for example, another brand. That is, you are probably one of the coolest, who knows how to squeeze the maximum out of it, and so that it looks normal.
Pavlovich:
But it's not difficult, it's not difficult, we teach a lot of people, yes, how to do it, we tell dozens of bloggers and all sorts of friends, the worst thing about it is that they don't do it, they don't even repeat it.
Interviewer:
Nobody does.
Pavlovich:
And now we don't teach anyone for free, in any case, because it's just a waste of time.
Interviewer:
Well, I haven't seen these formats from anyone, that is, we are now, you know, implementing something ourselves, yes, although our audience is not that big, but in general, no one does this, that is, you monetize it in a unique way.
Pavlovich:
Because I'm not a blogger, I'm not a blogger, I'm an entrepreneur, I work.
How much money does this bring in?
Interviewer:
It turns out that you have direct integration, there is an armored hoodie, for example, a screen, a logo, a referral, God's Eyes, yes, a lot of everything. How much money does this bring in total, you can tell, right?
Pavlovich:
Well, hundreds, hundreds a month.
Interviewer:
Well, that is, you earned more than a million dollars on your YouTube channel last year, am I right?
Pavlovich:
Well, yes, in any case. We counted how much. Even more. A million one hundred and fifty, that was something like that. This is purely from YouTube.
How I met the CEO of People Pro and about the benefits of media.
Interviewer:
Cool, cool. You know what else I wanted to ask? I know that Vlad helps create this channel a lot. In fact, he is the CEO of the People Pro channel and your partner. Tell us how you met him and what functions he performs in the People Pro weather holding.
Pavlovich:
YouTube, in itself, you know what's good about it. In general, any media activity, recognition there, it's good because it gives you money, of course, yes. But it also gives you a bunch of different connections. For example, I go to a restaurant in my hotel in the Maldives, and hop, someone orders a bottle of wine, some of my subscribers are from the Emirates. Then, I don't know, if I go to Antarctica tomorrow, figuratively speaking, then most likely some of our subscribers will be there.
They are like, you know, due to the subject matter, that I have hackers there, former carders gathered, a lot of digital business, your subscribers are hanging out with me too. They are all involved somewhere, and you can make money with them, and do all sorts of joint projects, everything is working out pretty well, so YouTube, in addition to any media in general, yes, in addition to the money it will give you, it will give you much greater recognition, popularity, it will open many previously closed doors, in terms of access to some necessary
interesting people, yes, who would not have talked to you before your fame and business opportunities, And this is very cool, and a living example, for example, I come to a nightclub, yes, even here, in Phuket, yes, you come, you have, I don’t know, 100 million dollars, and I, I have much less, but I have popularity, recognition. And 20-50 people will immediately gather around me, talk to someone about something, someone will get a California joint, treat me, someone else will buy something else, and this, well, we are a little bit, a little bit not on equal terms, although in terms of money, that is, you can have much more.
And you understand that money and popularity are much cooler than just money. Well, at least for me. You can have a completely different perception, I'm not imposing it.
Interviewer:
Well, I also think that just popularity together with money, well, it can give much more x than just money. Because it's some level of trust. Well, when I launched the YouTube channel, different guests came to me. Honestly, before I didn't even know how to meet these people. Well, despite the fact that there, maybe, even I earn more than someone else, and not from other spheres, and it was cool when I wrote to that person there. We were filming, here is a blogger telling these, travel, yes, I always watched his videos, cool, I didn’t even know that I would ever, perhaps, meet him.
And here we sat, chatted for three hours, drank coffee. That is, this opens up unique opportunities for the media, so if you are ready, brave, go ahead, download. And, by the way, you didn’t tell about Vlad, how you met Vlad, who is with you and GenGi?
Pavlovich:
He also watched my channel and once wrote, he was involved with visas, visa centers. In short, help with processing all sorts of visas, he says, let's do it. I say, well, let's do it, we've even already made a website. And I still have it in my piggy bank. But then the pandemic, everyone stopped traveling, opening visas, accordingly, and it all ended before it even began.
But I saw that he was a normal, active guy, I said, come to me and clean up this mess, because I created a ton of stuff, there are websites, blogs, publics, a channel, channel 1, 2, 3, a telegram channel and everything else, and there's just no one to manage this business. And he came and that's it, and we cleaned it up, and cleaned up these projects, they're all standing on their feet, and we created new ones, and separate ones in partnership, mostly in partnership, well, in general in all sorts of ways.
And many of them are still in development even now, there are long-term projects for 2-3 years, and I wouldn’t say that all of them, yes, we have, I don’t know, probably 30+ projects, I would say, and not all of them bring money already, well, 5-7-10 probably do, and the rest are still subsidized and subsidized, right there the check amount is normal, we spend 1050 per month on salaries only for programmers and so on, but we understand where, why we are going and that’s it.
The projects are really diverse, but for us they all basically lie in four planes, probably, well, this is pure e-commerce, cashbacks, coupon sites, and then various services for bloggers, and well, and a little bit of cybersecurity, probably, all the same in three planes. Well, and also just networks, networks of affiliate sites, where we earn something through referrals, we advertise some other services through referral links.
How do you come up with your business projects?
Interviewer:
Okay, so it turns out you have a lot of e-commerce projects, there are blogger services and an affiliate story, when you pour traffic and get a referral for it, right? How did you come up with all these projects? What is your approach? How do you start projects? Based on what?
Pavlovich:
As a rule, they grow out of my needs. That is, for example, blogger Stuls, we have a project, it’s already launched, yes, now there will be a new design, new functions, about five more new ones, but now it’s launched. There is a video output to the top of YouTube search, many people need cheating, you know, when... Well, I don’t use it, of course, and I don’t recommend it for all sorts of young white channels, but often people earn money using all sorts of methods, well, semi-legal ones on YouTube.
They make all sorts of video cuts, music streams, and monetize all of that. For example, they need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of video to try to hook up monetization to the channel. So, accordingly, it’s easier for them to boost it right away, turn on monetization and that’s it, and start earning there not in a year, but in the first month. You see, they use a boosting service, for example. And we took all of that, collected it, essentially, into a single service, everything that bloggers need, there will be a function to write time codes now, to rate pictures, well, which picture is better, the name, so that our software can pick the best name for your short or video, in general, a lot, a lot of everything.
And basically everything that we use in our work, only if earlier for everything you had to pay for each Czech and people often disappear, someone got sick, someone didn't have time to come, even to write time codes, often such a video came out, yes, and people write where the time codes are. Well, so that this does not happen, we have collected all this in a single service. And so in many ways, there, VPN is needed, yeah, well, VPN has passed out in Russia, well, let's try. Coupons, well, I often buy everything myself, I even broke my leg in St. Petersburg, when we were with you.
I even bought crutches for myself, they cost 3 thousand, they cost 3 thousand, and I'm in the hospital, I have nothing to do anyway. I googled a coupon for myself, bought it for 2 thousand, that is, I saved about 30 percent there, yes, I spent 2-3-5 minutes on it, that is, I love all this, I can do it, and therefore a lot of what I need grows. Or, for example, from the sphere of influence, yes, we have another project, it has already been launched, it’s just that there is no normal website front.
CPA Hunter.Io, for example. Under my video, let’s say, under any, I have a bunch of all sorts of referral links. But this is a task to really get into it, find a referral link to this VPN, to this one, to a proxy, to some other accounting service, to cards, to anything. This is hell, really.
And we took it, did it, cp hunter, that is, we gathered together about 70 thousand stores, you, as a blogger, for example, I don’t know, you shoot, you don’t have your own products, I have merch, there’s a T-shirt, a book, socks, an electronic book, there’s I don’t know, videos, congratulations, songs, to whatever you want, but you, a young blogger, you have nothing to sell, you don’t have your own product, although most foreign bloggers earn money on their brand, on merch, like Rihanna before she became a singer, she earns money on the fact that the cosmetic company there is worth a billion, and not on her songs.
Well, that too, of course, but the income volumes are simply incomparable. And we don't have that, like, it's very difficult to create merch. When I made T-shirts for myself, you have to look at 30 suppliers, come to an agreement, and if they made it for you today, it doesn't mean that they will make the next batch, because prices change, someone goes bankrupt, and so on. It's a big problem. That's why we did it, we put together CPA Hunter, this is CPA Hunter, you can just shoot videos about hunting and fishing, you have a fresh channel, and the video is cool,
everything, but you don't earn anything, and accordingly, since you don't earn anything on your YouTube channel, on your creativity, you have to go to the factory or to the office so that you have something to feed your family with, and so you took a link to a boat on Amazon or Lamoda, I don't know what, and inserted it into our CPA Hunter and it immediately became a referral for you, that is, if we don't have this shop, we We say that this shop doesn't exist, and this means that most likely it simply doesn't have an affiliate referral program, or it's so complicated that no one wants to deal with it.
Therefore, so that you don't spend half a day surfing the Internet, not losing track of where to find this link, to make an affiliate link for this boat or for a chainsaw.
How do you come up with your business projects?
Interviewer:
I can't put referral links because I need to go to some Admitat, I need to go, for example, to Skyeng, I want to upload traffic to Skyeng, they don't want to go there directly, they work through one affiliate program, I'm trying to find links, I need to release a video, I think, who cares, I'll just say Skyeng, it's a good company, but I really love them, I like them, I worked with them, but I can't get any reviews. For example, recently some hostings, yes, I need to reset a complex password to Biget to go in and get a referral there.
I think, come on, this is really a pain in the ass, I have such a pain in the ass. It's a cool thing, we'll test it, so, friends, if referral links appear under the video, go ahead and buy as much as you can from them. And Olezhek will earn his penny for his work, so I don't have to go to the office anymore.
Pavlovich:
You remembered Admetat, right? They have 5000... Admetat is a good company, I get most of the stores for my cashback and for the domes through them. Well, now, probably, a minority, but a lot. A very cool company, have been in this business for a long time, we have been friends and communicate for a long time. I sometimes speak at their conferences. But they have 5000 stores, and we have 60, almost 70 thousand unique ones. Well, what's the point for me to climb into Admetat, CJ, Rokuten Advertising, Selection, if I just get money in one place as a blogger.
And this thing, it was born out of my own needs, you know? Like we would go somewhere, do something purely for the sake of money, well, there’s probably no such thing. But let’s create this business so that it brings us money.
Interviewer:
Well, like open a flower shop, yeah. Like why? Why a flower shop, right?
Pavlovich:
Well, all of our projects are somehow connected to our current operational activities, you know?
An application for bloggers from Pavlovich.
Interviewer:
Listen, what will be in your new Mesh application, which is also being made for bloggers?
Pavlovich:
Well, it also grew out of our needs, yeah. I’ll tell you the truth about how it was. When I had already been on YouTube for a couple of years, I saw that Dud, Pivovarov’s editorial staff, Krasava, and some other people had some applications. They advertised it in one or two videos, and I went to look at the app. Well, I still have some of them on my phone. Lebedev, by the way, had another one. So, some company just made apps for them. Basically, it's just a certain blogger built into the app.
That is, it's like a YouTube app, only they don't show you all your bloggers, but only one. And the only good thing about that app, in principle, was that they would send push notifications that such and such a channel had a new video, and you just, when you're subscribed to a lot of people on YouTube, you don't notice them, there's a whole stream of them, you don't even look at them.
Interviewer:
No, you don't notice.
Pavlovich:
But here specifically from the app, that such and such a favorite blogger of yours had a video, and I looked at what the app was. And then there were the Clubhouse times, and we were there, well, there was a pandemic, everyone was sitting at home, and we talked to a lot of people in Clubhouse, with all sorts of cool, well, the most active guys. There was a lot of gypsy info there later, but we talked to all sorts of cool dudes, many from the startup sphere. And a guy came and said, I want to make a custom app for bloggers. I tried it here and there. I said, well, how do you make a custom app?
Well, there’s one food blogger, one, I don’t know, a fitness blogger, you. Well, you make one for everyone, then support them, it’s just hell. Keep them up to date in stores, yes, solve the problems of 200-300 apps, it’s hell. Although now I know...
Interviewer:
Agency business.
Pavlovich:
Yes, I know companies now, three companies, I studied them last week. Very expensive companies, from 30 to 60 million dollars in investments each, they allow you to make a custom app, but it is mainly for brands, communities, you know, an app for your community. But we went the other way, we made an app for influencers. What's the problem? Look, a real example, I think you will have the same. I have a million on YouTube, let's say, a little less.
I have 74 thousand on Instagram, 300 people visit my site per day, that is, the fact that I have some kind of book, or a congratulatory video, or something else, most of them don't even know from my YouTube, you know? It's hard to advertise everything everywhere, that's it. There are no clickable links on Instagram, only on stories, and so there is a kind of discommunication. I would like, for example, for people to learn about all my products in one place. In order to, for example, sponsor me, yes, that is, someone must download Patreon, for my stories someone must download Instagram, for posts there read the site, my merch is bought in third place, my videos are watched in fourth, podcasts and audio are listened to in fifth, if I want a fan meeting or a concert tomorrow, this is in sixth place,
Video congratulations, if I want to congratulate someone there for money, like Barack Obama, Schwarzenegger does, I am also often asked, I just did it for free. You need to download Aprilka Cameo. And it turns out that it is difficult for a blogger to create these tools. Why did we earn a lot on YouTube? Because I have about 15 different units for earning. A site, merch, publics, Telegram channels, in general, a lot of everything. But to create it, it took 4 years, about 1050 dollars.
And to keep it up to date is even more difficult. Somewhere the payment system fell off, somewhere there was a DOS attack, well, you basically know firsthand. And for a blogger who is especially young, well, it is unrealistic to create all this, he just does not even realize that I can have a site with referral links, and I can release clothes, and I can record a soundtrack and sell it. And so we decided to combine everything in one place, and this app Mesh was born. It has already been launched, it is now in the stores, yes, but for Android so far, though, when your video comes out.
And now we are just conducting its ICO in crypto, because there will also be a blockchain, blockchain is needed for the transparency of the transaction, I can buy advertising from you in the form of NFTs, so that it is recorded that I bought from you at that time. Or, for example, I promised that I would pay everyone who would stay until the end of my stream, two tokens, for example. That's what blockchain is for.
But it is also needed for investments in bloggers, to make a transparent mechanism for investing in bloggers, because there are companies that, let's say, buy out your monetization, your revenue from YouTube, yes, for years to come, they figuratively give you a million dollars now, they will accelerate very easily, that is, your credit rating is transparent, they see how much you earn on average per month from YouTube over the years, and they tell you, let's give you a million right away, but we will take from you, I don't know, well, one and a half times more, but spread it out over time.
And they give you this loan, and such companies, which I read about two years ago as startups that themselves attracted the first money, they already have 700 million dollars, a billion dollars under management, which they distribute to influencers in the form of loans. And we combine all this in one application, that's what blockchain is for. And we are doing ICOs simply because we are already tired of our own, we just have too many projects to conduct on our own. One. And secondly, well, we could have continued to conduct on our own, launch them. We need large sums for marketing, one.
And secondly, to make an iPhone and so on. But still more ICOs are not because of the money, but so that the community. That is, all these hamsters that you told me, notcoins and so on, the community. And when you have a huge community, well, like huge, any, of any size, the bigger the better, on Discord, on TikTok, on Instagram, in Telegram channels, in chats, then you already appear completely differently to investors, at least for the crypto sphere, at least for venture capitalists, you are already much more interesting.
Well, we also need blockchain there, you know what, well despite the fact that this is really a need, but we are specifically launching on BSC, on Binance Smart Chain in order to simply offer Binance, yes, also a share in our business, because, well, firstly, they will be able to
spin up a lot of their advertising on our bloggers, yes, all sorts of pre-rolls and so on, firstly, and secondly, they will simply recoup these investments on commissions very, very quickly. That's all.
Interviewer:
Smart coupling to go to Binance. And when will it be possible to test?
Pavlovich:
At least tomorrow. Maybe wait until it is in the Apple Play Market, I think this is a week or two, probably. We are already ready, we have probably even uploaded it today, it's just that moderation will start there now, well, it's not that easy to upload an application. Yesterday I was uploading an application on the dome, they tell me, why are you collecting emails there, well, and so on. So, there's a whole bunch of bureaucratic paperwork to upload one harmless dome app to the App Store.
Interviewer:
In short, friends, when the app comes out, we'll leave a link in the description.
Pavlovich:
Well, by the way, we implemented a cool thing there. You see, we have a process there, a business process. We don’t need installs for the sake of installs. We don’t care at all, we’re not ready, like Yandex.Food, to pay Admetad 1,500 rubles for one install. We give the blogger 15, in fact, even 20. There’s also crowdfunding, an auction of rare blogger items. You take your balance on NOS-Zero, he takes it and sells it. Will the laptop be tomorrow, right?
And in fact, just because the laptop is yours with your sticker, you can sell a used one for more than a new one. So, there’s an auction of rare blogger items, crowdfunding, that is, everything you can imagine. Competitions, organizing concerts, events, all in one app. And in connection with this, that we give the blogger all this irreplaceable toolkit, yes, which he simply is not even physically able to create, the market there too, you can put up any of your physical, electronic things
for sale, there is a book, merch, video greetings, an advertising slot, whatever you want, a video call with you, a meeting, you put everything in one section, and there is also a section I recommend for the CPA hunter. The CPA hunter, in principle, was born for this too. You just take a referral, make it for some boat, put it on a chandelier, on a teapot, on whatever you want. In connection with this, that we give the blogger such a huge, vast, irreplaceable toolkit, we understand that we simply do not need people.
That is, it is in the blogger's interests to bring as much of his audience there as possible, to put a dollar or five for a subscription to Meshchin, so that they pay, so that he has a constant cash flow, so that nothing prevents him from creating, earning even more, and not going.
Interviewer:
The full functionality of Onlyfance is only for normal guys.
Pavlovich:
Yes, and in connection with this, of course, there is also a referral program. A referral program, because we understand how our marketing is built. Someone will write about us, okay, but we do not need installs, we need bloggers. Bloggers who will simply tell their audience about it, install it. And, accordingly, all the marketing, that is, this requires money, quite a lot, but this is simply for sales, in fact. We need to reach out to bloggers, that is, in those places where they have already gathered and live, you understand?
And that's why we also made a referral program, for example, which we will give to producers, owners of music labels, owners of TikTok houses, so that today the TikToker is yours, and tomorrow he is gone, but this way you connect him to us through revka and always have a fairly significant share of our earnings. And we understand that there, for example, we will definitely not be able to reach Cristiano Ronaldo, right? But it is quite possible to reach his agent, and we tell the agent, listen, connect him, well, this is such an exaggerated example, but in general, connect him to us, and you will constantly have money through referrals.
Well, that's roughly the marketing system there.
Interviewer:
Well, it should spread virally, yes, from blogger to blogger, from producer to producer, yes, who grows new YouTubers, YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagrammers there, Telegrammers, it can work everywhere, you can upload Telegrams, because in the same Telegram there is no superspasimo and others like in YouTube. And you can’t thank the author of the channel, although they seem to have made stars now, but it would be cool if Telegram bloggers, this is also a large audience, they would upload, as it were, to your appendix.
Pavlovich:
But we discussed this, so it will be, because why, for example, in Telegram there is no organic tatraf, yes, that is, there is no search, that’s it. And for Telegram bloggers, who benefit from it, he has already created the content. So we are simply supporters of the fact that the same video, the video that we will release or is released on the channel, we use it there 15-20 times. We'll cut it into shorts, tik-toks, youtube reels, youtube shorts, instar-reels, zen, vk, linkedins and so on, where they reused one video 15-20 times.
And in the same way, in Prilka, let's say, the admin of a Telegram channel, he has already created a post, he threw it into his Telegram channel, in the same way he can throw an ikna into Prilka, the only difference is that Telegram will not pay him for it, if he does not have a direct advertiser, then he will not get anything, and we have advertising in the right places, either banners, or
something is sold through referral links, and he can earn many times more money from this, more than from Telegram, and the content is the same.
Interviewer:
So the creator will share the profit from advertising with you for his free post, which is not by subscription? Yes, yes. This is a real thrill, that is, he doesn't worry about finding an advertiser, like Binance, for example, who will never come to him if he has 5,000 subscribers, 500 and then maybe they'll talk, but with viewing these banners, for example, yes, he can expand his profits with you. Cool model, cool.
Pavlovich:
But, most likely, banners will be at first, yes, until we develop some kind of normal recommendation system, well, there are already developments in this regard, that is, you can be there, yes, even with your 500 subscribers, but we know the full portrait of your audience, we understand who you are, what topic you are blogging about, and we see the age and gender composition and by geo, we see who your subscribers are and we will show them a banner to your female part, I don’t know,
Lamoda, we will show the male part a booking or some kind of hunting store, let’s say, and of course it’s more profitable, yes, well, what’s there, we will share, let’s say, with the community admin money from Google or Yandex, for example. We also recently earned money from Yandex Zen, 500 thousand rubles or more, just on the same principle, you run some popular block of yours on Yandex.Zen, they just insert advertising banners there,
well, from this, from Yandex directly, from the contextual network, and they are on this crap, on Yandex.Zen we earned less now, and we earned 500 thousand rubles on Easy in general, yes, 500 thousand rubles is 5000 dollars, and they will be able to do exactly the same with us, but most likely it will be more profitable just later not these banners of Yandex and Google, but when there is a recommendation system, to sell some goods directly by links, because, I don’t know, booking, here booking, for example, is cool, a travel blogger will have a link to booking.
Booking doesn't pay much for the referral program, 4%, but the average bill is 1000 euros, that is, 40-80 euros from one purchase, and why would a blogger need 1000 clicks for one cent, yes, 10 dollars, if he can earn 40, 80, 160 dollars and so on from two purchases together with us. And that's a completely different story. Why do we, well, naturally, this is an app, it's a priority now, it's, let's say, the apogee.
Mesh is the apogee of our entire, probably, business career in the field of influencer marketing and blogging.
Isn't it too late to go to YouTube now?
Interviewer:
We will test it. And I think that soon links to Mesh will appear in my description, I hope. Listen, but Mesh is for influencers. And the question is how to become an influencer. If we ask about YouTube, is it too late, in your opinion, to go on YouTube? Because many say that the platform is already overheated, there are a lot of bloggers, if you don’t go, there won’t be any views. What do you think, isn’t it too late to go on YouTube in 2025?
Pavlovich:
Here we can draw an analogy with writing. Like Tolstoy or Chekhov, who said there, if you can’t write, don’t write. Then these graphomaniacs are of no use to anyone, not to the publishing house, not to anyone. The same thing on YouTube, if you can’t film, don’t film. You need to come there who has something to say, who is some kind of confident professional in any field, or who is able to entertain the audience well,
that is, with some of their skills, I don’t know, telling jokes beautifully, making jokes, that’s why stand-up comedy has taken off on YouTube, yes, because, well, it’s interesting. Some people collect a lot of songs, music channels about nature, about charity, by the way, in Russia it is especially popular, a lot of them, like Samsara and so on, there is Vasiana Senya, they collect millions of views of each video, the interview is relevant, niche interviews are more
on the topic of business, yes, but again not some specific one, as you tried to immediately shoot only about SEO, but business in general, that is, to expand the niche, when there is something to tell you, or you know how to entertain, or you just understand in the gray how to make money on the monetization of some channels with cuts, with shorts, with music, with these musical video broadcasts non-stop, multi-day. That's when you need to come to YouTube.
Either you have your own life story, or you became famous in another business, I don’t know, figuratively Tinkov, he lived without business secrets, yes, he became famous in his other business and, accordingly, well, they go for people like that. If tomorrow Cristiano creates his own channel on YouTube, well, fifty million will immediately subscribe on the first day, or even a hundred and a hundred and fifty million in a week. That is, it is quite understandable. These are the kind of people who can and should come to YouTube.
Another question is that strong professionals, they do not understand how to do this, you have to work for it, that is, they need some really good production teams around them, but most often it turns out that these info-gypsies come in and there with some desire to organize the sale of courses for him, and that’s where it all ends. The same Tsadzare, if we look, there is this one, I just know the producer with whom he works, Here is a doctor, yes, it would seem he is a doctor, but there, I don’t know, his start on YouTube was twice as fast as mine, or even three times faster. In a couple of years, he has a million plus subscribers on Instagram, God knows how many. I sometimes watch his videos with interest.
How can a newbie quickly start making money from YouTube.
Interviewer:
Well, he is interesting, a charismatic good friend. Listen, but if you don’t have a medical background, like Oleg Tinkov, yes, did you decide to go to YouTube? Well, for example, you learned how to shoot videos, well, there may even be some producer, not for millions there. What advice would you give to aspiring influencers, bloggers in terms of making money? How can you quickly start monetizing your channel and at what point should you start doing this?
Pavlovich:
Well, I have a YouTube channel, a Telegram channel about YouTube, that's what it's called, about YouTube. I basically put everything there, everything I knew, well, the most interesting. I rarely rush there now, because I've already laid out all my experience. But, the link is in the description, but do everything comprehensively, that is, if you run YouTube, then you should have Instagram, and Telegram channels, and so on. You link to each other everywhere so that your traffic runs in circles.
It doesn't matter what the entry point was from YouTube, whether it went to your Telegram or TikTok, or vice versa, from TikTok got to your YouTube. Cross-linking, using the same material dozens of times, both in full video format, as well as in short vertical video format, in text format, that is, we transfer many interviews there in the form of a superscript, we conduct, yes, in the public there in the form of a website and the same audio podcast, the audio track is separated from its own
video and that's it, please, you post it, and I have a manual, I wrote for a long time, for example, how to post an audio track in one place, there on SoundCloud, how to make it so that it automatically gets into all podcasts, there, Yandex.Music, VK.Music, Google.Podcast, Apple, Spotify and so on. Here, to do it in a complex, to create a lot of traffic-generating platforms, to loop them to each other, but first of all to understand that this is a process for years, that is,
it is for years and possibly for decades, and maybe not for one, and do you need it, but in order for you to be able to do all this, you should have monetization built up from the first days on YouTube, you should understand where the money comes from, that is, you should either advertise some of your products, your companies, services, let's say, or some partners whom you know, or by broadcast links there from Admit, and better from our CP Hunter, post some products and sell them there under the video, that is, and advertising formats you can on our channel people about look at all
the advertising formats that we use and apply there because if maybe you even shoot and successfully and there are a lot of abandoned channels with half a million, a million, 5 million subscribers, they just didn't have, well, like, money to do exactly creativity constantly and they abandoned because they have to go to work.
You know, I am absolutely convinced that in a year of working on a channel, well, in any topic, in a year you can easily provide yourself with, well, 10-20 thousand, well, let it be 10 thousand dollars, you will be able to provide yourself with a constant semi-passive income on YouTube in a year of work, that's all.
What can you make money on on the Internet now.
Interviewer:
Got it. Good plan, guys, write it down. First, think about monetization, then start filming. Think right away how you will monetize it. One more thing about final earnings. If not YouTube, is there money on the Internet?
Pavlovich:
In general, yes, and they are all lying somewhere. Firstly, they are in influencer marketing, the market is big, that is, everything related to bloggers. Even bigger money is in e-commerce, that is, the sale of goods, the automation of everything. There is even a startup, every day I read a certain resource about all sorts of startups. He solved the problem of returning goods to stores, especially expensive ones.
He takes these things, I don’t know, from Balentjaga and either brings the Balentjaga branded packaging into a marketable condition, restores the new one, steams, irons and either returns it to Balentjaga, they sell it, or sells it himself on platforms supported by all sorts of good things. Investments of about 100 million dollars in this enterprise. Therefore, e-commerce, influencer marketing, marketing in general, advertising, traffic arbitrage and everything that saves people time and money, that is, cashbacks, coupons, all sorts of AIs, chat bots and so on, accounting automation, API.
Now we buy from us for blogger-chairs, we need to use, constantly pull the YouTube, Instagram and so on apps, yes. How would we write all this our own, but now we understand that it is easier for us to pay one office that has collected 800 apps under its hood. Just think about it, 800 apps, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and everything we can imagine from the apps. And they take data from them, and they unified it, brought it into a single form.
And even what we wrote ourselves, it’s easier for us to break and take from them, I don’t know, pay one cent per request.
Traffic from YouTube is undervalued.
Interviewer:
What are your favorite sources of traffic, if you make money on the Internet? Where does it attract traffic from? Of course, it’s probably some kind of influence.
Pavlovich:
My favorite is YouTube, because, firstly, we have a lot of our own traffic, we have probably 5 channels on YouTube now that generate traffic. This is the first point, secondly, I spent in the summer, last fall, 20 thousand dollars on advertising one service there on Instagram and Telegram, well, on Instagram everything was completely wrong, 10 thousand dollars went, on Telegram it was a little better, 8 thousand dollars
went, two thousand were recouped, but the best is on YouTube, especially with the right audience, that is, you need to clearly understand this blogger, even the one you watch, he has Shikhman of the channel "Pogovorit", we recently talked about advertising there. A very good channel, I sometimes watch it myself, but in any case, what I want to advertise to her audience will not go well, because she has 80 or whatever percent of the female audience there. My goods are still slightly different services, that's it. Well, YouTube, of course, is number one, because it is not overrated, on the contrary, it is an underrated source and it is long-lasting.
If a blogger has a video that has flown in, yes, I have a video that has gained 2 million views, which even now, four years later, 500 people a day watch it every day, even after 4 years, that's a lot, and accordingly, YouTube constantly brings you clients, that's why, well, naturally, YouTube advertising is my favorite, but it's the advertising that you order from influencers somewhere, and because YouTube
the advertising that you unscrew is just to well through the Google advertising account yes, it rather harms especially young channels if you start pouring YouTube advertising on a young channel this has already been tested on my channels and on friendly ones, on any others, that it simply kills your algorithms, it does not give you organic traffic at all. Why? If you have enough money, you are already constantly paying Google.
Other sources of traffic.
Interviewer:
And what other sources besides YouTube do you like?
Pavlovich:
Now you see, the problem is that online advertising is very expensive, really, that is, when I started on cashback, I used to pour advertising there from Yandex, from Google, from KMSka and so on, one client cost me from 50 cents to 2 dollars, now, but if you fit into 10, it’s good, because people constantly see advertising from all over the place, they’re tired of it, so now there are already many different platforms that serve to build an
offline advertising channel, that is, the automation of all kinds of offline advertising campaigns, it seems to me that this is very promising, plus a new trend has appeared, several platforms, this is very, well, a really complex technical exercise, several platforms that allow you to place your advertising with micro-influencers on the Institute, on YouTube and so on, because my budgets, let’s say, not every advertiser can handle, and you may have, I don’t know, 5 thousand adherents, subscribers, but they are more involved, they are there with you from the first day, you are still, well, there are not millions of them.
And their advertising, well, let's say, with a microblogger or 10 microbloggers, It can be twice as cheap as mine, and at the same time twice as effective. I would probably even put microinfluencers in first place now in terms of advertising effectiveness.
Is SEO dead?
Interviewer:
Cool. Send me the platform later, take a look, I haven't even been keeping track of it. What do you think about SEO? Is SEO still alive or is SEO dead?
Pavlovich:
Well, yes, it is alive. As part of my job, I monitor all sorts of sites in coupon shops, cashbacks, and so on, which are important to me. And most of them, who are the top in earnings and so on, have the majority of their traffic from SEO. This is very cool. Old sites took their places a long time ago, but SEO is very good. After all, even some bookmaker pays you for SEO, let's say, they pay 80 dollars, for example, or 200 from one client.
And if a person came from SEO, that is, he himself was looking for what he needed, some bookmaker's office, or something else, They can pay you not 200, let's say, but 400, 500, 600, 800 for such a person simply because he is just, well, super targeted. Therefore, SEO, well, is alive, alive and well, but my sites, well, you know, some of them pump 20 thousand a day of traffic, yes, and some young sites I just can't get 20 people a day there.
That is, the sandbox is really visible from the leaked Google documents, this works really well for young sites.
Interviewer:
You'll go through the sandbox now, yes.
Pavlovich:
And how long does this sandbox last, by the way, in your opinion?
Interviewer:
Listen, well, I think somewhere between six months and a year. But if you pour in all sorts of trust, yes, traffic, direct type-in, yes, from YouTube, then I think the time can be reduced. Six months to a year somewhere, you just have to wait. In Seva, the patient ones also win, yes, this is also not a sprint, it's a marathon, like YouTube.
Write in the comments what the most interesting thought, quote from Seryozha, insider insight you got from this interview. Hugs, bye.
Contents:
- The story of Oleg's acquaintance with Seryozha
- How did you get into carding?
- How did you end up behind bars?
- Why were Americans and Europeans robbed?
- How much did he earn from crime?
- What did you spend the stolen money on?
- Carding Hype vs Arbitrage Hype
- Why shouldn't you go into crime now?
- Was it easier to engage in crime before?
- Oleg's story about cyber robbery
- Secret Tattoo
- How did they catch you?
- Meeting with American intelligence agents
- The difference between a good prison and a bad prison
- Songs That Helped Keep You From Going Crazy in Prison
- Why were you transferred to a bad prison?
- Myths about prison
- What is the correct way to enter a house?
- What interesting people did you meet in prison?
- How did you write a book in prison?
- Were you popular in prison?
- How did you write 150 business plans in prison?
- Interesting business ideas from cellmates
- Key findings after 10 years in prison
- What was the plan after prison?
- How did you come up with your own cashback service?
- Where did the idea to start a YouTube channel come from?
- First guest on the People Pro podcast
- What episode did the channel start with?
- How many people work on the YouTube channel?
- Unique ways to monetize a YouTube channel
- How much money does this bring in?
- How I met the CEO of People Pro and the benefits of being in the media
- How do you come up with your business projects?
- Oleg about referral links
- An app for bloggers from Pavlovich
- Isn't it too late to join YouTube now?
- How a Newbie Can Quickly Start Making Money from YouTube
- What can you make money on the Internet now?
- YouTube traffic is undervalued
- Other traffic sources
- Is SEO dead?
The story of how Oleg met Seryozha.
Interviewer:
Friends, hello everyone. Today I have a guest who needs no introduction. A former cybercriminal, entrepreneur, writer, blogger and my friend Sergey Pavlovich. He is also the author of a book that is selling well.
Pavlovich:
Hello, Seryozha. And we don’t need any advertising, hello. What are we going to talk about today? You have been interviewing me all this time, yes, and now you have grown to the point that I am interviewing you.
Interviewer:
Yes, yes. It’s funny, we have a story of how we met. Do you remember that I wrote you an e-mail with a script about Black SEO? E-mail. To admin@carding.pro . I said, Seryozha, let me come to your podcast. And you responded to me by e-mail. I said, yes, let’s do it, by e-mail.
Pavlovich:
Well, about the e-mail, you reminded me of a funny story about Ed Sheeran, that famous British musician, right? He says, I haven’t used my phone since 2015, I think, because, he says, when I became popular, there were about 10 thousand people in my phone book, and they all started writing something, it was hell. And that’s why he doesn’t use his mobile phone at all, he answers everyone by email.
Interviewer:
Well, that’s how it is, and you answered me by email too. I came to your first podcast, you and I were standing after the podcast. I say, listen, what should I film? How do I start filming? You say, well, film something. When I came to you for the third one, you said, yes, you’ve had enough. In short, let’s announce on this podcast that you’re launching a channel, and you won’t have a chance to back out. Actually, that’s how, friends, I came to YouTube thanks to Seryozha.
Pavlovich:
Not only you, about six more people probably came. Or even eight to YouTube thanks to me.
Interviewer:
That’s it. Not like your trendy producers. Here's a guy who makes a lot of bloggers. Look, I want to talk about what. About your story, how you ended up in prison, you got out and built your business empire, that is, it's rare that a person served 10 years and then built a white business empire, we're not talking about Don Corleone and the like, right? So let's talk about carding first. For those who don't know you at all, tell us what you did and why you were jailed for 10 years.
How did you get into carding?
Pavlovich:
Well, carding is a type of cybercrime where you're involved with other people's cards, yes, cards, accounts, it basically comes from the word "card". Well, I started here pretty early, I don't remember, probably 14-15 years old, well, 14 more likely. And we were... the 90s, yes, a time of famine, parents working two or three jobs to feed the family. Well, for those who had computers, the Internet was the first to appear in families, and so on.
We were left to our own devices and were up to something on the Internet. Well, mostly, of course, all sorts of dark topics, because there were no ideas for any kind of business or startups. Well, it was not the right environment and, in essence, whoever dug up something did what, so some went into journalism, others went somewhere else. I was studying at the institute and there was no money in the family, my mother and stepfather were living in a second marriage and, in short, there was no money in the family at all and I accidentally got into carding because I had never
been involved in crime. All my life I sold some goods. I remember as far back as I can remember, in the first and second grades of school, when the Soviet Union still existed, I bought Malbra stickers there for a ruble and sold them at school for 10, I was a super profiteer.
Interviewer:
Cool, great.
Pavlovich:
Then I found some Puma sneakers somewhere on stocks and sold them for a normal price. And I also liked the access to the Internet. I was selling, those who are younger don't remember, but you and I still remember that dial-up access, when it was 33,600 and then 56 via modem. You had to erase the cards. Yes, you can dial. And one company had unlimited. Young providers, when they entered the market, often offered packages, unlimited, for example, for 50 dollars.
I sold them for 100, that is, well, 100 percent. And like 50 dollars at that time, yes, this is, I don't know, 1995, 2006, 2007, 2008. That is, it was a lot of money, 50 dollars. It's like now, probably 500 in purchasing power, well, depending on the country, but approximately.
Interviewer:
Well, approximately, yes, most likely, yes.
Pavlovich:
Approximately like a five-hundredth. And so I was selling. And then I accidentally got into carding. One of my friends asked me if there were other people's cards there, for sale somewhere. And I had seen them a hundred times on the bulletin board of a Belarusian computer newspaper, where I basically sold my own goods. I saw them, took him, I think, 600 dollars and paid for it. But in the end it turned out that he did not buy them back from me, and that's it, I put all my money there, 600 dollars is a lot for a schoolboy. And I still have these cards. And I think, well, I need to try to put them somewhere then. And
that's how it all started. They put in little by little, it's called clothing carding. Some goods, electronics, clothes, basically everything that could be reached, that were sent to our long-suffering country, let's say. And then I sold more cards, naturally, dumps. This is already a dump, this is already a thing that is written on the magnetic strip of a credit card, you can buy it in a physical real shop.
But now you won't be surprised by this, it used to be rare, like most shops didn't even have POS terminals, you just buy for cash and that's it. In general, I sold these dumps, but sometimes I sent my guys, especially when dumps with pin codes were found right in ATMs, withdraw cash, well, and so on there a little at a time.
Interviewer:
How did you do it in ATMs? How does it work? How did you steal this data from an ATM?
Pavlovich:
It's not exactly like stealing, that is, there were ban... In short, the dump, it's inside, it contains the card number, its expiration date and a few more digits, well, I don't know, 10, 20, 30, half of them are zeros, which supposedly, well, not even supposedly, but directly give you access to the bank account. And it happened that the dump could be written manually, that is, some banks did not check what digits you scribbled there.
You just take the card number, its expiration date, put 201 there, let's say, a digit, and the rest are zeros, and that's it. Phishers got it, wrote about victims, take an email database, for example, make a phishing site like Bank of America, MBNA, Capital One, I remember one of those, Fleetbank, Chase bought it out later, I think, and that's it, they just sent it out to the database, like, go in, you need something, change your PIN code, let's say, to Bank of America, it's a fake site,
and the guy goes in, and it turns out, we know the UN card number and PIN code, and since the dump can be written to this bank, no one checks anything there, like, well, you write the dump manually and go to an ATM to withdraw money, well, that's one of the ways. The second way is simple, the guys sometimes hacked databases, dumps with PIN codes.
Interviewer:
They hacked banks, right?
Pavlovich:
Yes, yes. In short, in all networks, in principle, in many, retail networks and other processing, there the card numbers and PIN codes are stored in encrypted form. According to the rules, it is not allowed to store Visa, but Visa, Master Cards, Amix. But everyone has always done it this way, they just neglected the security standards there, straight up, and that's it, they could be decrypted, that is, there were such databases.
They also hung them on banks... Well, it started in my presence, the first, probably, such a skimmer, yes, they soldered it together in my kitchen in Kiev. They made overlays on the card receiver, it goes through your overlay, well, this device is generally called a skimmer, it goes through your overlay, reads the PIN code in the device's memory, then it could be transmitted via GSM, the SIM card transmitted everything, it could be removed, well, it is advisable to remove it, because, well, what, an expensive device and an outlandish one to give to cops or bank employees.
To remove PIN codes, well PIN codes, a video camera was immediately attached somewhere on the side, which is on the keyboard, and then, well, this was already without me, I saw guys making an advanced overlay keyboard, that is, right on the keyboard where you enter the PIN code, another one is superimposed. Well, something like that.
Interviewer:
Why build your own business? This question is often answered in order to increase your income and never work for hire again. However, your own business is a bold and risky step, and to achieve passive income, you will need years of work without days off. I am sure that not every one of you will want to devote 90 percent of your life to work. Moreover, there are other easier ways to earn passive income, and one of them is crowdlending. Crowdlending is a way of collectively financing a business. That is, you give money to a real business at interest.
Crowdlending is a relatively young but rapidly developing market, which is strictly regulated by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. All crowdlending platforms are required to have a license from the Central Bank. The volume of the crowdlending market in 2023 amounted to more than 24 billion rubles. One of the active participants in this market is Nibelinvest, and the platform has many advantages. Let's start with the fact that the platform has one of the highest profitability rates on the market - up to 30%, and the minimum investment amount is only 100 rubles.
Nible Invest offers investments only in verified businesses. All companies undergo the most rigorous selection. The platform also has an offer with a guarantor. If the company for some reason cannot return the money, its guarantor will return the money. There is also an opportunity to invest in the overdue debt market. The borrowers are stable companies with assets of 10 million rubles and a license from the Federal Bailiff Service. Nible Invest is currently running a promotion. For any investment of 5 thousand rubles and a term of 12 months, you will receive plus 35% to the return on your investments.
But that's not all. Nible Invest is launching a referral program, and for each invited friend you will receive 5,000 rubles to your account. Follow the link in the description, participate in the promotion and receive additional bonuses for invited users. And we continue.
How did you end up behind bars?
Pavlovich:
I sat for 10 years and one month. Well, that's behind the bars of a pretrial detention center, a camp. But that's more, of course. So, for about 13 years, probably, with all sorts of house arrests, chemistry. So, in short, it was about 13 years in total, probably. And I got out and realized that I wasn’t interested in it at all, that crime is a vicious circle, you go around in circles all the time, firstly, well, you make some mistakes, yes, you end up behind bars time and time again, because I was there twice, two and a half and seven and a half, let’s say.
Interviewer:
Yes, and how did it happen that you were put in jail the first time, you got out and started robbing banks again?
Pavlovich:
Well, I didn't take any action myself, I just built a scheme, people sold these dumps to me, and that's it, I was just making cash. Yes, but then they eventually put me in jail, because we had a special agent of the US Secret Service in our group. It's a unit like the FSO in Russia, they guard top officials, but in America they also investigate the most complex financial crimes, fraud, carding and everything related to money.
Now, by the way, they investigate everything with crypto as well. But there's also crime, what I don't like is that, okay, you end up behind bars time after time, but it also greatly narrows the field of your activity, because, as a rule, you move within the framework of one criminal specialty. There's a burglar who steals from apartments, a car thief who steals cars and so on. Well, there are more diverse scammers, of course, there's a set of all sorts of tools.
Well, there are probably more carders, because you do 20-30 scams a day. Somewhere they stole something from accounts, somewhere they sold something to someone, somewhere they made a phishing site, sent out a mailing, somehow got hold of pin codes there in different ways, but they still didn’t sell it all later, and I also sold all sorts of fake documents, well, EU ones, they were mainly used for moving, well, within the EU they were used because you can’t give them into your hands there, you showed them somewhere and that’s it, but otherwise
they were mainly bought to go shopping with fake cards because the sellers could ask for a passport for a big purchase, and the name there had to be the same as on the card, and they rolled out fake documents.
Interviewer:
Which you made for them.
Pavlovich:
Yes, of course, they have awesome documents there, they are just, well, give them to you, yes, if you don’t have the original in your hands, I don’t know, some British or French set, for example, German, they have, it turns out, a passport, a driver’s license and an internal ID card, in Germany they have Ausweis or something, you won’t be able to tell the difference, it was done in Bulgaria and probably still is, there is a connection with them, if I want, you won’t be able to tell that it’s a fake, only if you have a second one in your hands and you start comparing them, take two,
start comparing a magnifying glass, then you’ll probably understand that one of them is a fake, but it’s not certain, and with all this I was confused for a long time, then I was released, but the most unfair thing was that I was still wanted by Interpol because I kind of robbed America, well, Europe a little, America mainly, it turned out that I already served time for it at I had all the American episodes in my Belarusian criminal case, the Americans say, don't sit here any longer.
And I didn’t want to sit there at all, well, for the same thing a second time. And then it turned out that I managed to resolve it. I have an American lawyer, Litvak, a really cool one. He closed my case, and also closed several criminal cases for two of my relatives, right now. And that’s it. And it took me three years, right now, since we started, to close all my criminal cases.
And it turns out that they kept me in Interpol without leaving for 19 years. That is, I almost never went abroad, that is, since 2008 I haven’t been abroad at all, I was always in Belarus and Russia, because I couldn’t leave. But, thank God, Justice prevailed.
Interviewer:
Yes, I remember, we were in St. Petersburg with you, remember, we separated and then came to your hotel, there were a lot of police, Interpol, something like that in St. Petersburg.
Pavlovich:
Yes.
Interviewer:
You were still there, 2021, I think, but they couldn’t do anything to you at that time.
Pavlovich:
Well, because Russia didn’t extradite its own, or Belarusians, or anyone. There is no extradition treaty with America, so now all the fugitive cybercriminals in Russia are hanging around in the Russian Federation, even many Ukrainian ones, because Ukraine has started cooperating with the States and maybe, well, it doesn’t really like to extradite its own, it’s not legally allowed, but it can cause problems. Friends, I’ve been promoting websites for over 13 years
Interviewer:
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Why did they rob Americans and Europeans?
Interviewer:
Listen, why did you mainly rob Americans and Europeans? Or just Americans?
Pavlovich:
Well, in the CIS, cards were not developed at all, you understand? This is the maximum that was, they transferred salaries to them, and all the workers there on the day of the advance and on the day of payday at the ATM withdrew money, the cards were simply not even used. That's it. That was the problem.
Interviewer:
Yeah, there was cash.
Pavlovich:
Yes. And in the US, these are developed processing systems and everything. And naturally, in any criminal topic, the US suffers first, they get hammered, well, because they simply have something to take, and the distribution of information systems is so great that it would be a sin not to use it. But here is an important point, we need to emphasize that America does not forgive at all. Roman Polanski, a director, he was detained in Switzerland, there, about 10 years ago for some rape in the States, there, damn it, I don’t know, in the 70s.
And they, unlike Belarus, for example, have no statute of limitations, like in Belka, for example, you committed some crime, like carding, yes, let's say, like me, you hid, ran for 15 years, well, somewhere around 10, depending on the severity of the article, for example, under my article 15, and then that's it, you didn't commit new crimes, there are no new charges against you, you can close the case due to the statute of limitations, and in the States, the statute of limitations only exists for filing charges, but if the cops have already brought your charges to court, then you can run for 100 years, they will still look for you.
Well, not that they will actively look for you, but you will still fall into the clutches of American justice, most likely. That's the big difference. Therefore, it is better not to joke with the States at all, in any criminal topics, there was a case about criminal moron, remember? He was somehow inflating Google advertising, clicking on it, you know, recently, how long did they give him, 12 or how many years? He thought he was innocent, sort of, but...
Interviewer:
He simply caused financial damage to Google, and, well, they went to judge him.
Pavlovich:
Yeah, it's better not to joke around with the States at all.
How much did he earn from crime?
Interviewer:
Seryozha, okay, you were entering these cards, robbing banks, and how much did you manage to earn per month at that time? So it was some kind of crazy money?
Pavlovich:
Well, I don't know, no, well, a hundred, a hundred for that same 2003-2004, a hundred a month, well, normal, in short. A hundred a month then, I don't know, probably like 300-400 now. It wasn't bad, it wasn't bad, but at the peak of my entire criminal career I only earned about 200 million dollars. According to criminal cases, I caused 36 million in damage, but I had 200 million in total. And it's not like I had 200 million lying around there in cash, yes.
I had 200-300 thousand saved up in cash, probably always the maximum. That is, I never had 200 million in my suitcase. That is, it's spread out over time, so even 200 million, yes, I had to sit out 10 years for it, 120 thousand dollars a year. Well, I'm not ready at all.
Interviewer:
Well, it's not worth it.
Pavlovich:
100%.
Interviewer:
Well, that is, at the time you were arrested, how much money did you have left, a million two hundred left?
Pavlovich:
I don’t know, it’s hard to judge, a lot was spent on solving various issues. Well, the first time I was released, there, from prison, I had, I don’t know, two hundred thousand, probably, dollars. The second time I was released, I came to Moscow, when we met and so on, I came to Moscow with thirty thousand dollars, that’s all my money from my entire criminal career, so I had thirty thousand dollars left in my hands.
Interviewer:
Listen, but it doesn’t sound like some crazy amount of money, as if, you know, you have millions of dollars in bullion, gold, like they show in the movies, but it doesn’t look like that. Like, not so spectacular.
Pavlovich:
In different ways. Some people who are now involved in ransomware, encrypting these ransomware programs, encryptors, they have tens of millions of dollars now, 20, 50, 100. That is, you can see such amounts in their accusations. So it’s different for everyone. I didn’t have much, plus I had to do time for it.
What did you spend the stolen money on?
Interviewer:
And what did you spend it on, Seryozha?
Pavlovich:
Well, all kinds of branded clothes. Watches, clothes, phones, back then all kinds of mobile phones were starting to appear. The trendy, there, Siemens SL45, probably the trendiest one had an MP3 player. What else? Well, all kinds of Vertus, yes, some of us had them. I didn’t have a Vertu. Cars, of course, little cars, chicks and trips somewhere to Europe, there, to the Maldives and so on, yes.
The hype of carding vs. the hype of arbitrage.
Interviewer:
Parties and so on, right? Listen, can you compare the hype arbitrageurs now, like these "Beautiful Life", "Parties", "Lamby" and the like, and carders, when you were doing it, it was also on the hype, it looked like an elite, like, damn, these are some kind of rich, incomprehensible guys connected with IT. Can you compare this, the hype of carding and the hype of arbitrage now?
Pavlovich:
No, you can't compare, because we were still in the shadows, you know, you walk around under a criminal case every day, and not under one, and in one country. That's why we already really, well, hung out, of course, met somewhere, but these were all some kind of closed parties just for our own, and not that numerous, there were 5-10 people in different countries or went on vacation somewhere together, but we didn't have anything like now, of course. But in any case, we tried not to attract unnecessary attention to ourselves.
Why shouldn't you go into crime now?
Interviewer:
You know, we are probably watched by many young people who read telegrams, they have applications installed, and now the Darknet and all sorts of gray topics are very hyped. From the height of your experience, including criminal, is it worth going into these topics, or would you not advise it?
Pavlovich:
Well, I wouldn't advise it now, that is, in my time, several circumstances simply came together. We were extremely poor, yes, all residents of the former USSR. Secondly, we had no moral principles at all, our parents didn't instill in us from childhood, most of us, that there was no respect for other people's private property first of all. That is, they said that stealing is a sin, but they didn't explain why. Now, well, in principle, it's clear, yes, why.
That is, any of you can answer the question of why stealing is bad, right? For example, I can, just put yourself in their place, tomorrow you come to an ATM, there you need, I don't know, to withdraw money for plane tickets, let's say, to pay for medicine for your child. You come there to withdraw your grand, or like I had it in a restaurant recently, a couple of years ago, I come, I know I have 50 thousand rubles on my card, a new card, and a fresh one at that, I'm going to pay,
but there's nothing there, that is, someone stole all this money from me, I still don't understand.
Interviewer:
Come on, did the carders rip you off?
Pavlovich:
Yeah, well, that happened, yeah. A Kiwi bank card, I replaced it in Moscow, a brand new card, that's it, I came to Sochi with it, to Polyana, I pay at a restaurant, and there was no money there, and the card was always in my pocket, and the only thing is, I know that I linked it to Booking, but I didn't pay with it. I don't think it left Booking. Most likely, it left through Kiwi by some method, through their management.
Interviewer:
Maybe it was a phishing booking?
Pavlovich:
No, well, I'll figure out whether it was phishing or not.
Interviewer:
Yes, it's hard to scam you, but it still happens.
Pavlovich:
Nevertheless, it happens. So, basically, put yourself in the place of me, would I want to be robbed like that, no. Well, that's it, and in principle the moral side is clear, and so it all came together, yes, there was no money, there was no respect for other people's private property, there were computers, well, and somehow it all happened. Now, of course, I wouldn't do it that way, because it's much more comfortable for me to be in business, especially since I have a bunch of projects, yes, and there is a synergy between them, between other people, between you and everyone.
That is, I pull parts of my other project from one project, somewhere we partnered with someone, that is, in business the head works in different directions, I like it every day, there is no stagnation. It's like they say that older people should, well, constantly have their brains working, guess some crossword puzzles, sudoku and so on. And then, like, well, an active lifestyle, you don't age, but that's how it is with me now, it seems I'm not ageing, 42.
Was it easier to engage in crime before?
Interviewer:
And you look good. Listen, as far as I understand, young people go into cybercrime because they have no money and there is no good example nearby that there is another way.
Pavlovich:
Well, back then there were no opportunities. Here we need to add a third. Back then there were no opportunities like there are now. Now, I don’t know, as a freelancer you can easily earn your one and a half to two thousand. By helping someone with something in some white gray topics, getting a job as a copywriter, designers, editors. Our editors earn 2-3 thousand dollars, 4, probably, some even earn here in our holding.
Interviewer:
We also pay well for videos, you can definitely earn a thousand dollars easily. You know, we won’t have motion design in this podcast, where you and I are flying in 3D. You don’t need to have some super motion design skills. So yes, you can definitely earn money. And what was it like in the 90s? There was some market, you could trade there, if the bandit wasn't killed, yes, and there was an entrance to the world of computers, that's it, the end. By the way, I also have a story about how I was, so to speak, robbed in the early 2000s.
There was a popular public page on VKontakte, called Yasart, I don't remember why they called it that, there were memes, there was a lot of audience. And at one point the admin disappeared, and, in general, the name of the public was dropped. And I go in in the morning, register it and take it for myself, and people start subscribing en masse. And it, so you understand, is like an 18+ axe now, some kind of back then. I just take it from my VK account, and, apparently, some friends of this admin, it's not clear why he disappeared, or interested parties who did this to him, yes, they start writing to me, give me the public, I say, like, go to hell.
And I had websites back then, I was making some traffic, selling links, there, under SIOshka, something else. That was right at the beginning of my career, it was probably the eighth year. They don't do anything.
Oleg's story about cyber robbery.
Interviewer:
Do you remember, there used to be a website "nomer.org", where anyone could check a Moscow number. It was a really open database. You can check all the registration information for free on the Internet, like now "God's Eye".
By the way, "God's Eye" is an excellent service that works in Telegram, you can enter any phone number and check your debtors, friends or ill-wishers. Look what they have for you. They check my mother's maiden name there, go to the domain registrar that I supposedly have, and just take the panel with all my domains, write to me, like, give us a public page, otherwise we won't give you the domains.
There was some story, that we checked, that these were students from the neighboring dormitory, well, like we found, like, we checked, sent them the data in a personal message and just there, let's say, by force decided that they didn't want to anymore, they couldn't write, let's say, manually for some time. Well, I mean, that the guys just dropped my mother's maiden name as a secret question, found how to do it, and I think, and there were a shitload of domains, this public page is not worth, like, and 5 percent. That's how I was robbed once, the guys are cunning.
So don't put a secret question, your mother's maiden name, because in the eye of God, for example, it will be definitely visible, and they will simply reset all your passwords.
Pavlovich:
Well, from the eye of God 130 x, now on referral this month.
Secret tattoo.
Interviewer:
Yeah, and don't fall for any scams, don't romance with people on the internet you don't know, they could have taken me away altogether. My question is, is it true that you have an American Express tattoo on your arm?
Pavlovich:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard to see here, but this Centurion, yeah, I don't know, you can see it on camera, Centurion, American Express, the emblem, yeah.
Interviewer:
Cool. You did that because you stole a lot of American Express cards, so you got it tattooed, right?
Pavlovich:
No, American Express, they didn't work well in Europe and Russia, and I just like this Centurion, their logo, so I got it tattooed and I've already signed it. American Express, maybe they'll charge you some dough for advertising now.
Interviewer:
Yeah, right now all sorts of Dodo Pizza and others have done a promotion for a lifetime pizza for getting a logo tattooed somewhere on your hand or in a visible place, so you can write to them and say I'm your long-time fan, so to speak, a long-time fan, your influencer, right?
Pavlovich:
They'll remember, they'll remember other cards where I used American Express, a couple more things will be added, it can't get any better.
How did they catch you?
Interviewer:
Yeah, it's better not to write to them. Listen, and such, briefly, here's the story of how you were caught, they were secret service agents, where did they catch you? Did special forces come into the apartment, or where were you at that time?
Pavlovich:
I was constantly being caught in Belarus, yes, Belarusian cops, the KGB, well, on tips from all sorts of Americans, yes, well, and not only. My stepfather turned me in there, something idiotic. We were shopping with cards in Belarus, not very successfully. I think that was the first time I got caught, well, with fake ones, they were caught on video cameras and so on. And so the first case was opened against me because of that. Well, I was walking without any masks, they detained me the first time at my dacha, the second time right at home.
In short, the cops and the special services, they have this thing, they like to come in the morning, but at 6 in the morning, at 7 in the morning, but at 6.30, when you're sleeping, and, in principle, it's easier for Spetsprosony to take a person, he's still inhibited, doesn't think clearly, can't destroy evidence. And they come now too, but they don't come now. I live in another country now, thank God.
And then they like to come, especially to me for some reason. I haven't been involved in crime for a long time, but they still come and come, come and come. I put up a sign, there, well, I hand it over here.
Interviewer:
And don't call, there's none here, if they don't give you money.
Pavlovich:
Yeah, what do they hand over here on Thursdays, fuck. Well, don't go there every day.
Meeting with American special service agents.
Interviewer:
Listen, did you eventually talk to those Secret Service agents, I think you had some kind of communication with them, yes, with the Americans, when they took you?
Pavlovich:
No, I talked to them later, when I wanted to resolve my case there. But they offered such conditions that it wasn’t really, like, they said, well, we’re not really interested in you, but come to the States for a couple of years, like, 2-3 years, a year or two or three without naming specific dates, work for us, help us out a little, and we’ll, like, help you close the case. But, again, they always added that there were no guarantees, it was a court case, the judge would decide, and so on.
And I kind of talked to everyone, but somehow I didn’t feel like going to the States under those conditions. It would be fine if I were still alone, but I just got released, yes, plus I got a family, and that's it, and screw it.
The difference between a good and a bad prison.
Interviewer:
No, that's right. Better through the legal channel remotely, so that they could record such podcasts with you. I wanted to ask a couple of interesting questions about prison. In prison, you served, it seems to me, in very different conditions, from the best, coolest to the most terrible, in some top-2 shitty zone in Russia. What is the difference in these zones and how much does it cost to sit in a good one?
Pavlovich:
In order for you to have a mobile phone, you had to drink tea. Only in Belarus, not in Russia. But, in fact, they are, I repeat, Russian zones, only not so harsh, there, these mops and so on, there was nothing like that in Belka. Well, often, probably, there are a lot of political prisoners, but before there were none. Well, what is the difference? I served in the best zone in the country, and in one of the worst. And there are simply cardinal differences.
Black zones, you know how it works, that the prisoners are on their own, like, well, do whatever you want there, phones, okay, do whatever you want, managed to sneak in, don't get caught there, call, do whatever you want, vodka, drugs and so on. But don't create problems for us, that is, the cops, don't create problems, like you have your own movement, we have ours, like mutual respect and that's it. And everything is fine there.
Interviewer:
You don't rebel, you don't cause riots?
Pavlovich:
Well, by the way, they don't like vodka very much, they often turned a blind eye to the grass, and they don't like vodka very much, because, well, the majority of people in the world, yes, let's admit that they don't know how to drink, probably 80, 90 percent, probably, and they become aggressive, violent, and what difference does it make whether you drink behind bars or outside, if you don't know how to drink, you're the same idiot there and there, that's why vodka often causes all sorts of riots, well, not riots, fights with knives, there are fistfights, that's why the cops especially.
Interviewer:
Yes, someone made a claim against someone, it started, and a brawl began, and they just don't want to sort it out, right?
Pavlovich:
Well, vodka, for example, if you have some kind of pocket cop, let's say, in a pretrial detention center or in a zone, yes, you kill him, you pay him, you help him with something, you help his family, you send him on vacation once a year, he can, you know, bring you a cell phone, let's say, well, I just go, some home phone from home, I carry it with me, and he can bring you a phone, and sometimes even some weed, yes, but he will refuse to bring vodka. Well, it's like that, not everyone has such opportunities.
How much does it cost?
Interviewer:
So you say that there you can, like, have someone you know there from the administration. How much does it really cost?
Pavlovich:
Well, it varies. It depends on where. For example, well, a pretrial detention center is one story. There, maybe you will pay one and a half, two, five thousand dollars for them to bring you a cell phone. Yes, maybe you'll pay twenty there. Well, the maximum is probably ten thousand. I hear about it now in all sorts of Russian prisons, well, not prisons, but pretrial detention centers. In a cheaper prison, we had a standard fee, the road cost 50 dollars, to bring a phone. Sometimes, well, and more expensive, but in our prison they sold phones right there, that's what's good.
They rejected one, you went and bought a second one right there yourself.
Interviewer:
That is, it was a kind of light prison, there was a tough one, where the administration searched everything.
Pavlovich:
Well, it's tough, but you know what's fundamentally different, they constantly screw with your brain there. That is, you wake up at 6 in the morning, try there at 6-10, maybe the controller will come in already, and you're still lying there, there's a violation of the isolation ward, goodbye, amnesty and so on. That is, they constantly keep you in a nervous state, from morning until night, from 6 in the morning until 22, and they constantly nag you for not shaving. I saw a friend of mine, his stubble grows quickly, he shaved in the morning, well, it was fucking impossible not to shave, they'd fuck you right away.
But the violation, the report, the isolation ward, that's it, I mean, not in the literal sense. Then he comes from the industrial zone, his stubble grows quickly, they pull him, like why didn't he shave. So he shaved in the morning, a hundred witnesses that he shaved in the morning, they simply wouldn't let him into the industrial zone. And that's it, and they drag him out, and the violation, he's not shaved. Well, in short, it's such nonsense, you know, you're constantly being pulled over some little things, like a trained monkey in a cage, and that's it, and it, in short, hits your nervous system hard.
That's why the zone, let it be naked, bossy and cheerful, yes, than all clean and renovated, but where you'll live according to the regime, there, I don't know, it really shakes your nervous system. I remember, already in my sixth year, I was already going crazy, I already understood that somewhere, just a little bit, and this attic would explode in me. I walked around the local area near my barracks. Well, the zone is divided into local areas by fences, so that you don't wander around the entire zone back and forth without permission from the cops, without some kind of passage, yes, which could be done in different ways.
Songs that helped not to go crazy in prison.
Pavlovich:
I walked around this local area, humming four specific songs. I think they helped me stay sane. I still listen to them. I have these songs in a separate playlist. I'll send them to you, then you can create a playlist. With the song that helped a person stay sane. We need to send these artists some money, or a couple hundred dollars each.
Why were you transferred to a bad prison?
Interviewer:
To donate, yes. Listen, why did they put you in such a zone? Were you rowdy in a normal one, or are they just transferring you?
Pavlovich:
Well, there are different reasons. Somewhere there's some kind of conflict, somewhere for operational reasons, somewhere your accomplices come to the same zone, there, they need to separate you, and so on, in short.
Interviewer:
They should take you, right?
Pavlovich:
Yes. Well, do you know what's the saddest thing in Belarusian zones? Now almost all political prisoners go through this. There is an article that has survived from Soviet times, completely fucked up, barbaric, called 411. It's like if you constantly violate the order of serving your sentence, violate, refuse to clean the toilet because the roosters clean, I don't know, a button is not fastened, well, they will find something to write about.
He didn't say hello that way, not by name and patronymic, he just said Petrovich. Well, in short, they will always find something to pick on, and it implies that they can judge you, this is a new criminal case, a new trial, a new zone, you will definitely be transferred to a new zone after that, and they constantly add a year to your sentence up to one year, and if your article is serious or especially serious, then they can add up to two years, and not limited. That is, I met guys, one of the ten took twenty, they added two years to him five times, one guy, he had a term of one year there, I think he served seven or eight, they twisted him six or seven times, adding a year, that is, this is the saddest thing.
And another sad thing about behind bars is that in principle in our post-Soviet countries, yes, it is like this everywhere, not only behind bars, that the law applies only to citizens, against citizens. It doesn't concern those in power at all, neither the cops, nor the prosecutors, no one. They twist the law as they please, unfortunately. And it's the same behind bars, and you feel this, well, complete injustice, and you can't do anything about it.
That's why it's perceived even more negatively and exaggeratedly behind bars.
Myths about prison.
Interviewer:
And by the way, what of what you heard, let's say, in folklore about prison turned out to be true, that you once ended up there? Well, like, all these rumors, jokes.
Pavlovich:
Well, I don't know what folklore you're talking about, I once watched an NTV series, a prison one, it was called "The Zone". Well, it was more about pretrial detention centers, actually. But there was some real horror there, that they planted people with active tuberculosis in cells, there, in order to infect you, and so on.
Well, it's like I just haven't seen anything like that, yes, such brutal stuff, and I thought that in that series, you had a lot of fiction in it, and then you read all those Russian cases, someone was raped by a mop, someone else was raped, etc., etc., and you understand that, well, putting a tuberculosis patient in with healthy guys is absolutely no trouble at all, so it's probably all true. Even what seems, at first glance, some kind of absolute wildness, it can happen at any moment.
What is the correct way to enter a hut?
Interviewer:
Got it, got it. This is, of course, sad. Well, here's the question, a special question from our producer Stasik, actually, how to enter a hut correctly? I don't know why Stasik is interested in this, but...
Pavlovich:
Well, let him practice. It's just that anyone in the post-Soviet space needs to know the answer to this question, yes. Well, how do you enter? So what if you enter? You usually have a mattress in your hands. Mattress, sheets, pillow, spoon, mug, all that stuff. And your own bag, for example. If there was time to pack or relatives gave the Air Force something. And you come in with this stuff, went into the hut, said hello, asked where to throw the cotton wool, all this stuff.
In Russia it's called a roll. It's just rolled up, tied with a sheet, and you carry it in your hands. In our country it's called wadding. A simple wadding mattress. That's where you should throw the wadding, that's all. You asked who was responsible for the huts, went up to the person in charge, chatted, talked. Well, they'll invite you themselves, find out what article you're charged with, when you arrived, what news you're having on the outside.
Because some people have been in prison for a long time, a year, two, three, and a newbie, you can talk, have some new experiences. If you're normal, they'll pull you in, brew some chifers or just drink some tea, coffee, chat and that's it. If you're some kind of devil, they'll tell you you'll sleep there, clean the hut, well, okay. In short, that's not the worst thing, not the worst thing.
Interviewer:
Well, that is, if you are a normal guy, then it is not like in the movies, you show, you go in, there are 10 people pressing you right away. If you are a normal guy, communicate normally, then everything will be fine.
Pavlovich:
Well, most likely, yes. That is, it is unlikely that old men will throw themselves into the press hut to break you, to get something out of you, some testimony. This happens, but it is such a rarity. Therefore, you should not be afraid to go into the hut. The main thing is not to lie, because the cell system is constantly in sight, somewhere there are such lynxes who have already been there for 20-30 years, and they know how to compare facts. If you said something six months ago, then in six months, two years, or ten years they can remember it.
And what did you say then? So where is the truth? You lied to us, and so on. Therefore, it is better not to lie there, there is such an expression, to put on airs, not to exaggerate, not to fib, in short, well, as it is, that's it.
What interesting people did you meet in prison?
Interviewer:
As in life in general, should you behave like that? Listen, did you meet interesting people in prison, any unique ones? Who do you remember?
Pavlovich:
Yes, I met them, I met a lot, and, basically, I was friends with all sorts of organized crime members, there, organized crime leaders, there, well, with those and non-leaders too, but who occupied some kind of high position in the groups, Well, because they are basically all adults, yes, all with money, with connections and with whom there is something to talk about, smart, well-read, as it were, that's it. And I am friends with many people from there, and I help them, and some have already been released.
Well, one of my friends was released last year, he was behind the farm from the medical unit, he was constantly helping me, well, in a number of different issues. And another one is being released in September, well. Well, different. Basically, of course, in the maximum security zone they are mostly, damn, 90 percent of all sorts of assholes and figuratively, if there is an earthquake tomorrow and they all die, yes, she is a little cynical, but on earth it will only get better, damn, because, well, they are absolutely so adapted to life, people who want nothing, who give nothing to the world, 90 percent.
10% are normal, in the general zone for first-timers this ratio is better, but in general, the majority of them, you could say directly, frankly, are the dregs of society, probably 80-90% of them are in the maximum security zone.
Interviewer:
These are murderers, robbers, bandits, violent crimes, these are the people we are talking about, right?
Pavlovich:
No, now they are mainly in prison for drugs, you know, wherever it is. They are mainly in prison for drugs, and there are few murderers. Murderers, they, what a paradox, are all fighting against weed, against drugs, yes, mainly. And the murderers are in prison, well, alcohol is sold everywhere, and 90% of all murderers, that's what I met, 95, probably, they are just such everyday people against the background of alcohol.
Someone does not even remember in the morning what happened, yes, what happened.
How did you write a book in prison?
Interviewer:
Listen, how were you able to write a book while in prison, and publish it, and hand it in? It came out when you were still in prison, right?
Pavlovich:
Yes, it came out in 2013, and I was released in the spring of 2016. Well, I wrote and wrote, you know, I sent it to the outside world in all sorts of ways, I wrote something on my phone. I had a Nokia N97, with a slide-out keyboard, like a small laptop, it was absolutely superb.
Interviewer:
An Encage, like a gaming one, that’s like it’s not there?
Pavlovich:
Well, it folds out like a laptop, the keyboard slides out, it’s a really, really cool phone, actually, it’s top-notch, probably the best thing Nokia makes, the N97. I wrote a lot from it, I sent it by email, then, when I basically had the book ready, I spent, what, three years, three or three and a half writing, I sent it all over. Then they typed my drafts, my typed texts, handwritten drafts, they put it all together for me to proofread, I proofread it myself and contacted the publishers, selected about six of them via the Internet with my mobile phone, wrote to them, and one of them, the Piter publishing house, directly told me, thank them very much, said, yes, let's print everything, and my mother, I think, signed the contract with them instead of me, and everything was ok, the book came out. And then they bothered me in the new zone, there is a deputy corporor, well, this is a deputy for operational work, but in the zone in fact this is the first person, because the owner, the head of the zone, the boss, he is like the British queen, more of a decorative position, he receives awards and constantly gets beat up.
And the deputy for operational work controls the entire situation in the zone, who breathes what, who needs to be promoted, who, on the contrary, needs help. And in Russia he was something like, we called him Zamporor, and in Russia he was something like Bor, well, something like that, Bor, I don’t know what it stands for. So, he pulls me, says, from the isolation ward, I was right in the isolation ward in Bura for three months. He pulls, and how did it happen that you wrote me a book from the ministry, they write there, fucking hell, they sent a request for you to answer.
I say, well, I didn't write for you about that, well, I wrote with a cell phone, I've already served my time with a cell phone, he's still sitting in solitary confinement. And that's it, and he calmed down, he says, oh, not for us, well, like, everything was great then. Well, that's it, and somehow, somehow, he made friends with me, in any case, he didn't do anything bad, and in that zone it was when they didn't do anything bad to you, it was, well, you could say, it was a really strong friendship. Well, that's it, and I was released.
Interviewer:
That's exactly the creepy one that was, right?
Pavlovich:
Well, yes.
Were you popular in the zone?
Interviewer:
And, by the way, did that book make you famous in the zone, did the other prisoners know that, oh, look, there, dude, that carder who robbed Amerikosovsky?
Pavlovich:
Yes, yes, of course. And there were all these articles in the newspapers. Well, she was a genius. And now she is read in every prison, in every pretrial detention center, in many departments, in law universities, in the academies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, they teach about her. And in the prisons they read her until they are tired, there are queues for her. And sometimes, you know, to some of my friends, acquaintances who end up in prison, well, everywhere, there, in the former Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, okay, Belarus, there, Russia.
Sometimes I sign them like that, well, with such a respectful text, so as to give them a little authority right from the start, and everyone there already goes, the author of the book is like that.
Interviewer:
Holy shit, like Pavlovich wrote it there. By the way, let's raffle off the books at the end of the episode.
Pavlovich:
Yeah, let's.
Interviewer:
So watch to the end, Seryozha will sign it. Let's play backgammon. By the way, I don't know how to play backgammon. Do you, I suppose? I can play chess.
Pavlovich:
I know a little, but I mean, when normal guys play, they go straight there, yeah, I can't, I count like this, like this, like this, like this, well, I count under the holes, well, it's okay, not that bad.
How did you write 150 business plans in prison?
Interviewer:
Anyway, let's play it out, watch until the end. Yeah, you know, we were talking, right when we first met, you were still starting your channel, you said that you wrote about 40 business plans in prison. So you were sitting there and you weren't just sitting there, drinking chifir, and you were thinking about what you would do later when you were free. I think you wrote about 40, right? How did you do it? Where did you get your ideas from?
Pavlovich:
I think more. There are probably about 150 of them. I just, realizing that I’m unlikely to implement them all due to a number of different circumstances, yes, I once filmed one video about business on my channel and scanned all this handwritten stuff there and posted it in a package. There, different ideas were worked out in different areas, both online and offline, to varying degrees of elaboration. Well, I read on the Internet, there were no Telegram channels of any kind back then, well, I read all sorts of cool websites about business and so on.
And I read a lot, especially in that zone where mobile was already equated, I don’t know, with terrorism, I read a lot of magazines there, that is, I subscribed to 20-30 different magazines, really 20-30. They are diverse, there is popular mechanics, and GQ, and Playboy, to look at chicks, and about computers, and about mobile applications, some phones, Men's Health, something else, hunting, fishing.
Interviewer:
Did Hacker subscribe?
Pavlovich:
No, I didn't. Well, I don't have a technical mindset, I'm more of a humanities person, and I wasn't really interested in it. Well, I read a bit when I was free, yes, earlier, but there, no, I didn't subscribe.
Interesting business ideas from cellmates.
Interviewer:
Yes, it would be strange if you subscribed. He wants to hack someone again, they thought. Okay, so you got information from websites, magazines and as a result you came out with a bunch of plans, let's say. Listen, has it ever happened that a cellmate, some kind of swindler, let's say, on economics, who tells some story and you're like, op, you can make a white business out of this on the outside?
Pavlovich:
Well, yes, they have. It's interesting to talk to swindlers in general, but the kind, you know, whose damages amount to a million dollars or more, let's say. They're really well-versed in all sorts of topics. I've heard about shared construction, a lot of different schemes, like those that can be used white, naturally, like at the excavation stage, like selling a house, yes, and then building with the same money. But this isn't a common story, because there are still really interesting people there, if you take that percentage in a pretrial detention center, in the zone, well, out of 100 people, probably 2-3, well, 5, probably 5 percent maximum, let's say so.
The main conclusions after 10 years in prison.
Interviewer:
But there is still someone to talk to, to emphasize something interesting. Listen, let's share the main conclusions after 10 years in prison. How did it change you, perhaps? What new attitudes did you leave with?
Pavlovich:
The main conclusions are that there is no point in engaging in crime when there are now tons of opportunities in the legal sphere. It takes up your time. That's okay, I had the opportunity to pay for something somewhere, and a phone, and so on. Somehow I can't say outright that I fell behind in the zone. That is, I was deprived of, in essence, freedom of movement, but any other freedom to think, develop, read, I naturally had it.
But most people won't have that. And it turns out that for a person this is simply wasted time, right? And time is kind of very expensive, a priceless resource, but non-renewable. In some places you can even improve your health if you have money, in the absence of bad habits - no problem. But with time, everything is different, and this must be appreciated, because every day we are getting closer to death.
These are probably the main conclusions. Well, and not to engage in crime for another reason, if your family is dear to you, especially if it's children, parents and everything else, because it's a really big experience for them, even much more than for you.
What was the plan after prison?
Interviewer:
Golden words, you could say. Good conclusions for the lost, well, 10 years of freedom, not lost lives, but definitely freedom. You know what's interesting, so the prison doors closed behind you, you found yourself free, and what was the plan next? Where did you go next, drove, or friends met you, then you got out, that's it, you were free.
Pavlovich:
The plan was to quickly leave Belarus somewhere, because I understood that I would be sitting there all the time, they would be watching me, where I would make a mistake and I don't know at all, or I would figuratively give a bribe to a traffic cop so that he wouldn't take away my license. Well, for example, yes, and understanding all this, I'm not saying that it's good to bribe the traffic cops there, but I'm figuratively speaking for example, I understood that my life there would not be calm, and somewhere either I would back down, or they would make some kind of provocation, as already happened, and that's it, and that's why I
immediately left for Moscow, I had 30 thousand dollars left of my money, but I was already making my cashback, Secret Discounter, and I attracted 1100, probably, more dollars there, so I left with thirty of my own, well, I knew that I would have another 1100. But this financing there one investor let us down, and it turned out to be spread out over several years, well, it's not quite the same effect, but in the end we did everything, everything works. Well, really, I put in many times more of my own money there than even the attracted investors.
I came, I mean, well, to implement some very specific plans that I thought out in prison.
How did you come up with your cashback service?
Interviewer:
So you came up with cashback while you were still in prison?
Pavlovich:
Yes, yes. I didn't know that such a thing existed, I thought I was such an innovator, yes, in the world, and an innovator, but it turns out that there, since 1998, cashbacks have been working in the States, and I got the idea, I just poured adult, porn via referral links, I earn a lot on this back in the day, something else, something else there, casinos, betting, I don't remember, in short, some kind of farm, in short, all sorts of...
Interviewer:
In those old days, yes, before prison.
Pavlovich:
Yes, I was pouring all sorts of Internet crap there using spam, and I saw that I had commissions, huge ones, I was paid 70% of referrals, let's say 60-70, not uncommon, and I thought, what if I just roll back part of this money, huge ones, to people so that they constantly buy through me, and that's it, and I thought that I should do this. I didn't know what cashback was called then, but I did it, kind of vulgarly, connected online stores to myself and offline ones, we'll probably start connecting now.
Everything has been developed for a long time, but there is no time for this.
Where did the idea to start a YouTube channel come from?
Interviewer:
Well, we'll leave the link to the cashback, Seryozha, of course, in the description. Such a great project, with which Sergey started, cannot be left unadvertised. Listen, how did you decide to make a YouTube channel? You got out of prison, you're making this cashback project. Why YouTube? How did you even come to YouTube?
Pavlovich:
I certainly knew YouTube, what kind of company it was, what year it was founded, and even how much it was sold to Google for at the time. But it never really interested me. I watched YouTube all the time before 2018. I watched a couple of videos on it about how they pump up the press and a couple of Lady Gaga clips. That's all I watched on YouTube before 2017. And then a friend from Sweden calls me and says, look, Transformer made an episode about your competitors in cashback.
I watched it, it was cool, I called him and asked how much it would cost to make one about me. They told me they wanted to make the same thing, they said the price was 45 thousand dollars, I decided that it was kind of humiliatingly high, yes, and that if I get any registrations, there, leads and from there, then each one will cost. Well, I calculated about 500 dollars, at a fair price, there, I don't know, half a dollar. And I realized that I would never buy these investments. Well, and in the end I decided to make my own channel in the conversational genre, and all sorts of interviews, because I had already trained myself a little to write dialogues in a book, yes.
When you write a book, you need to liven it up with more dialogues, so that the characters could interact with each other. And I thought that you could do the same thing, in principle, on YouTube. Well, I tried, and in a year I had how many for the first? Well, more than a hundred thousand subscribers.
The first guest on the People Pro podcast.
Interviewer:
Who was the first to come to your podcast? Who was on the first episode?
Pavlovich:
The first one is my friend, now Vanya Mironov, a lawyer. He was in prison once, and a jury acquitted him. He is now working as a lawyer for the attempted murder of Chubais, a high-profile case happened there in the early 2000s. And so he wrote a book walled up in prison, a cool book about Moscow prisons. And I liked it, I am still reading this book, I think even an article, not the book itself, but an article about it in Komsomolskaya Pravda.
I think, a cool guy, I wish I could meet him someday. And then I came to Moscow, and he writes to me a year later there, I had a bunch of interviews in the press, on TV. And he writes, I work there as a lawyer, I am such and such, that is, there is a question, can you consult. Well, we met, got acquainted and that's it, we still communicate. So he was the first, then a couple of hacker acquaintances, well, somehow it slowly went on.
With what episode did the channel take off?
Interviewer:
And what episode was the first to take off so that your channel started to be recognized? How did it all start, that the channel started to grow wildly?
Pavlovich:
There was an episode about drugs with Kladman, and his YouTube somehow unexpectedly threw in right with a recommendation, there was a lot of traffic and it brought in 2000 subscribers a day, that meant somewhere, I don’t know, 10-15 videos on my channel approximately and that’s all, but Russian surveillance quickly banned it because of the topic, but my passion woke up, I realized I don’t know, there were about 30 thousand subscribers on the channel, that’s somewhere around the 6th month
of the channel, probably the 8th month of the channel, and so it turns out that I had 1015 before that the video became 1030, 40 probably, and now over the summer, in June it took off, and by September there were more than 100 thousand subscribers for the first time, that is, in a year, yes, more than a hundred.
Interviewer:
I remember that episode, a man in a mask, either a clown or something like that, blue-red-white, yeah, and after that video they started sending me your videos, my best friend says, oh, look, check out what a cool channel has appeared, and I started watching all the episodes, well, in general it’s, well, such, let’s say, journalism, such a format was new on YouTube, no one was doing it, especially in some topic, like the Internet, earnings, some kind of dirt.
Well, I just started watching you. You see, that is, such a video, let’s say, fateful for the channel, which gave you the motivation to continue doing this. I had such a video about Argentina, if you remember, I was filming such a mini-film, such a documentary, and when we launched the channel with your help, I had, I remember, 5600 subscribers. After this video I immediately got 19,000, right away. Holy shit. I was going to those 5-600, well, 15 episodes, probably.
Pavlovich:
It's cool. YouTube gives traffic to the patient, that is, YouTube is not a sprint, but a marathon, that is, you have to get ready to work, for a long time it seems to you that nothing is working out, that your videos deserve more views and subscribers. Well, it rewards, as it were, the patient, little by little throwing up some videos. For me, for 6 years, in September the channel will be 6 years old already. It happened four times that it threw up videos and they got a lot of traffic with a recommendation. The last one there recently was Wagnervets, who has 1.4 million now, also mostly without injuries precisely from recommendations.
But this is an uncommon story, but you have to believe in it and work on your mistakes, because if you've been doing the same thing for, I don't know, a year or two and nothing is working out, then you probably need to draw some conclusions. But there are also statistics that are global among YouTube bloggers, that in the first year people who try hard gain a thousand subscribers in the first year. In the second year they can reach ten thousand, and in the third year there can already be exponential growth.
Therefore, if you have gained a thousand subscribers in a year or ten in two, then you should not be upset, this is how you are within the framework of global statistics, nothing to worry about.
Interviewer:
100%, because in the first years of the channel, that is, the first year, I probably have a two and a half year old channel, I was happy that I had 10 people a day, and now hundreds of people come, mostly Sharts, really, yes, hundreds of people, subscribers a day, and when our Sharts with Nikita Anufriev threw in, a thousand a day came. So, friends, if you are making a YouTube channel, make videos, improve them, editing, sound, packaging, quality, and every day you will have more and more subscribers, and everything will be fine.
Pavlovich:
In fact, this is bullshit. This editing, sound, packaging. Well, sound, yes, should be important, because many do not even watch, especially interviews, you know, they listen in the background somewhere in the car. I often do the same. Sound, yes, but there is shooting, editing, it's all bullshit. It seems like you work on some video, I don't know, a month, two or three, it seems to you that it will take off, there is really expensive shooting, expensive editing, a lot of time and energy spent on it, but it doesn't take off.
At the same time, I don't know, I have an iPhone, I was sometimes too lazy to go to the studio in Moscow, I hung an external microphone, turned on the iPhone and that's it, without light, without anything, just filmed at home. That is, the most important thing is stories, some interesting lives. If you have a background, well, something to tell, that's the first point. And the second, the heroes you call, if you have a channel about business or some interviews.
Stories are more important, more important than videos and pictures, that is, definitely.
Interviewer:
Of course, yes. Well, you see, if we take not the podcast format, but the format of expert videos, a talking head, I still think that the dynamics of editing, throw out everything boring, what is so-so, leave the meat, yes, how to make the editing dynamic, here it can greatly affect retention. And podcasts, of course, if you invite uninteresting people, or you yourself do not know how to conduct a dialogue, open up, ask questions, then it will not go.
In general, by the way, podcasts, well, a complex format, one of the most complex on YouTube, it seems to me, documentaries are not that complex, I am used to it, it is simple and that's it.
Pavlovich:
Isn't it easier, you and I can even talk, I can watch my own business, that is, well, communicate, that is, you essentially have to be silent, just a lead-in question, that is, for me it is the easiest, that is, even filming one episode when I myself am telling something takes much more preparation.
Interviewer:
It certainly does. We have an agency channel. It can take me 4 hours to write a script, 4 hours to release an 8-minute video. How many people are working on your channel now? What team?
How many people are working on the YouTube channel?
Pavlovich:
Well, there are probably 3 editors, 3-4 editors, we have 3, probably. One makes a long video, the second, when the first one doesn’t have time, and one shortcuts, makes TikToks. Well, probably 3-4 editors, but they all get paid, well, piecework, you know, based on the number of minutes. Then the person who uploads, one person on scripts. That is, he, well, probably 6-7 people.
Interviewer:
Well, not such a huge production team, I would say. You know how to make compressed teams that...
Pavlovich:
Yes, and also a cameraman, a cameraman. Well, in short, eight. Eight at most.
Interviewer:
And how much do you earn from your YouTube channel?
Pavlovich:
I don’t earn any money at all. They turned off monetization, they turned off monetization in Russia, and that’s it, I don’t earn anything at all. I had 8 thousand dollars before the war, yes, a month, well, it was just from coins. It was enough for a couple of salaries, for the office. And now they’re gone. Now, at best, a thousand dollars a month. Well, advertising my products still saves me, like advertising for the same “Eye of God” via referrals and, well, all sorts of integrations.
We’ve come up with a lot. You need money, after all, the number of episodes is limited. I’ve been filming, for 6 years now, yes, 2-3 episodes a week. It’s like, well, a lot of work, even if you count the number of episodes.
Interviewer:
Enormous.
Pavlovich:
Advertisers seem to want money, but I can’t shoot more, well, for obvious reasons. That’s why we came up with all sorts of other formats. I’m sitting in a brand sweater, we also have a TV on it, a sign, a brand logo, and a neon sign under the TV. And you seem to watch, the episode is the same, but you have a lot more advertising formats in it. You can sell at least these three formats that I mentioned, plus direct integration, plus you can sell someone’s pre-roll, plus a second integration there at the 10-15 minute mark, and in the end you watch, it seems like you have one episode, but they pay for it 6-7 times.
You also advertise your own products indirectly, and so on from time to time, well, it’s normal.
Unique ways to monetize a YouTube channel.
Interviewer:
Cool model, when I talk to you, with Vlad, we'll also talk about Vlad, you uniquely monetize the YouTube channel on Russian-language YouTube, that is, no one has plasma, or a logo under the plasma, for example, another brand. That is, you are probably one of the coolest, who knows how to squeeze the maximum out of it, and so that it looks normal.
Pavlovich:
But it's not difficult, it's not difficult, we teach a lot of people, yes, how to do it, we tell dozens of bloggers and all sorts of friends, the worst thing about it is that they don't do it, they don't even repeat it.
Interviewer:
Nobody does.
Pavlovich:
And now we don't teach anyone for free, in any case, because it's just a waste of time.
Interviewer:
Well, I haven't seen these formats from anyone, that is, we are now, you know, implementing something ourselves, yes, although our audience is not that big, but in general, no one does this, that is, you monetize it in a unique way.
Pavlovich:
Because I'm not a blogger, I'm not a blogger, I'm an entrepreneur, I work.
How much money does this bring in?
Interviewer:
It turns out that you have direct integration, there is an armored hoodie, for example, a screen, a logo, a referral, God's Eyes, yes, a lot of everything. How much money does this bring in total, you can tell, right?
Pavlovich:
Well, hundreds, hundreds a month.
Interviewer:
Well, that is, you earned more than a million dollars on your YouTube channel last year, am I right?
Pavlovich:
Well, yes, in any case. We counted how much. Even more. A million one hundred and fifty, that was something like that. This is purely from YouTube.
How I met the CEO of People Pro and about the benefits of media.
Interviewer:
Cool, cool. You know what else I wanted to ask? I know that Vlad helps create this channel a lot. In fact, he is the CEO of the People Pro channel and your partner. Tell us how you met him and what functions he performs in the People Pro weather holding.
Pavlovich:
YouTube, in itself, you know what's good about it. In general, any media activity, recognition there, it's good because it gives you money, of course, yes. But it also gives you a bunch of different connections. For example, I go to a restaurant in my hotel in the Maldives, and hop, someone orders a bottle of wine, some of my subscribers are from the Emirates. Then, I don't know, if I go to Antarctica tomorrow, figuratively speaking, then most likely some of our subscribers will be there.
They are like, you know, due to the subject matter, that I have hackers there, former carders gathered, a lot of digital business, your subscribers are hanging out with me too. They are all involved somewhere, and you can make money with them, and do all sorts of joint projects, everything is working out pretty well, so YouTube, in addition to any media in general, yes, in addition to the money it will give you, it will give you much greater recognition, popularity, it will open many previously closed doors, in terms of access to some necessary
interesting people, yes, who would not have talked to you before your fame and business opportunities, And this is very cool, and a living example, for example, I come to a nightclub, yes, even here, in Phuket, yes, you come, you have, I don’t know, 100 million dollars, and I, I have much less, but I have popularity, recognition. And 20-50 people will immediately gather around me, talk to someone about something, someone will get a California joint, treat me, someone else will buy something else, and this, well, we are a little bit, a little bit not on equal terms, although in terms of money, that is, you can have much more.
And you understand that money and popularity are much cooler than just money. Well, at least for me. You can have a completely different perception, I'm not imposing it.
Interviewer:
Well, I also think that just popularity together with money, well, it can give much more x than just money. Because it's some level of trust. Well, when I launched the YouTube channel, different guests came to me. Honestly, before I didn't even know how to meet these people. Well, despite the fact that there, maybe, even I earn more than someone else, and not from other spheres, and it was cool when I wrote to that person there. We were filming, here is a blogger telling these, travel, yes, I always watched his videos, cool, I didn’t even know that I would ever, perhaps, meet him.
And here we sat, chatted for three hours, drank coffee. That is, this opens up unique opportunities for the media, so if you are ready, brave, go ahead, download. And, by the way, you didn’t tell about Vlad, how you met Vlad, who is with you and GenGi?
Pavlovich:
He also watched my channel and once wrote, he was involved with visas, visa centers. In short, help with processing all sorts of visas, he says, let's do it. I say, well, let's do it, we've even already made a website. And I still have it in my piggy bank. But then the pandemic, everyone stopped traveling, opening visas, accordingly, and it all ended before it even began.
But I saw that he was a normal, active guy, I said, come to me and clean up this mess, because I created a ton of stuff, there are websites, blogs, publics, a channel, channel 1, 2, 3, a telegram channel and everything else, and there's just no one to manage this business. And he came and that's it, and we cleaned it up, and cleaned up these projects, they're all standing on their feet, and we created new ones, and separate ones in partnership, mostly in partnership, well, in general in all sorts of ways.
And many of them are still in development even now, there are long-term projects for 2-3 years, and I wouldn’t say that all of them, yes, we have, I don’t know, probably 30+ projects, I would say, and not all of them bring money already, well, 5-7-10 probably do, and the rest are still subsidized and subsidized, right there the check amount is normal, we spend 1050 per month on salaries only for programmers and so on, but we understand where, why we are going and that’s it.
The projects are really diverse, but for us they all basically lie in four planes, probably, well, this is pure e-commerce, cashbacks, coupon sites, and then various services for bloggers, and well, and a little bit of cybersecurity, probably, all the same in three planes. Well, and also just networks, networks of affiliate sites, where we earn something through referrals, we advertise some other services through referral links.
How do you come up with your business projects?
Interviewer:
Okay, so it turns out you have a lot of e-commerce projects, there are blogger services and an affiliate story, when you pour traffic and get a referral for it, right? How did you come up with all these projects? What is your approach? How do you start projects? Based on what?
Pavlovich:
As a rule, they grow out of my needs. That is, for example, blogger Stuls, we have a project, it’s already launched, yes, now there will be a new design, new functions, about five more new ones, but now it’s launched. There is a video output to the top of YouTube search, many people need cheating, you know, when... Well, I don’t use it, of course, and I don’t recommend it for all sorts of young white channels, but often people earn money using all sorts of methods, well, semi-legal ones on YouTube.
They make all sorts of video cuts, music streams, and monetize all of that. For example, they need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of video to try to hook up monetization to the channel. So, accordingly, it’s easier for them to boost it right away, turn on monetization and that’s it, and start earning there not in a year, but in the first month. You see, they use a boosting service, for example. And we took all of that, collected it, essentially, into a single service, everything that bloggers need, there will be a function to write time codes now, to rate pictures, well, which picture is better, the name, so that our software can pick the best name for your short or video, in general, a lot, a lot of everything.
And basically everything that we use in our work, only if earlier for everything you had to pay for each Czech and people often disappear, someone got sick, someone didn't have time to come, even to write time codes, often such a video came out, yes, and people write where the time codes are. Well, so that this does not happen, we have collected all this in a single service. And so in many ways, there, VPN is needed, yeah, well, VPN has passed out in Russia, well, let's try. Coupons, well, I often buy everything myself, I even broke my leg in St. Petersburg, when we were with you.
I even bought crutches for myself, they cost 3 thousand, they cost 3 thousand, and I'm in the hospital, I have nothing to do anyway. I googled a coupon for myself, bought it for 2 thousand, that is, I saved about 30 percent there, yes, I spent 2-3-5 minutes on it, that is, I love all this, I can do it, and therefore a lot of what I need grows. Or, for example, from the sphere of influence, yes, we have another project, it has already been launched, it’s just that there is no normal website front.
CPA Hunter.Io, for example. Under my video, let’s say, under any, I have a bunch of all sorts of referral links. But this is a task to really get into it, find a referral link to this VPN, to this one, to a proxy, to some other accounting service, to cards, to anything. This is hell, really.
And we took it, did it, cp hunter, that is, we gathered together about 70 thousand stores, you, as a blogger, for example, I don’t know, you shoot, you don’t have your own products, I have merch, there’s a T-shirt, a book, socks, an electronic book, there’s I don’t know, videos, congratulations, songs, to whatever you want, but you, a young blogger, you have nothing to sell, you don’t have your own product, although most foreign bloggers earn money on their brand, on merch, like Rihanna before she became a singer, she earns money on the fact that the cosmetic company there is worth a billion, and not on her songs.
Well, that too, of course, but the income volumes are simply incomparable. And we don't have that, like, it's very difficult to create merch. When I made T-shirts for myself, you have to look at 30 suppliers, come to an agreement, and if they made it for you today, it doesn't mean that they will make the next batch, because prices change, someone goes bankrupt, and so on. It's a big problem. That's why we did it, we put together CPA Hunter, this is CPA Hunter, you can just shoot videos about hunting and fishing, you have a fresh channel, and the video is cool,
everything, but you don't earn anything, and accordingly, since you don't earn anything on your YouTube channel, on your creativity, you have to go to the factory or to the office so that you have something to feed your family with, and so you took a link to a boat on Amazon or Lamoda, I don't know what, and inserted it into our CPA Hunter and it immediately became a referral for you, that is, if we don't have this shop, we We say that this shop doesn't exist, and this means that most likely it simply doesn't have an affiliate referral program, or it's so complicated that no one wants to deal with it.
Therefore, so that you don't spend half a day surfing the Internet, not losing track of where to find this link, to make an affiliate link for this boat or for a chainsaw.
How do you come up with your business projects?
Interviewer:
I can't put referral links because I need to go to some Admitat, I need to go, for example, to Skyeng, I want to upload traffic to Skyeng, they don't want to go there directly, they work through one affiliate program, I'm trying to find links, I need to release a video, I think, who cares, I'll just say Skyeng, it's a good company, but I really love them, I like them, I worked with them, but I can't get any reviews. For example, recently some hostings, yes, I need to reset a complex password to Biget to go in and get a referral there.
I think, come on, this is really a pain in the ass, I have such a pain in the ass. It's a cool thing, we'll test it, so, friends, if referral links appear under the video, go ahead and buy as much as you can from them. And Olezhek will earn his penny for his work, so I don't have to go to the office anymore.
Pavlovich:
You remembered Admetat, right? They have 5000... Admetat is a good company, I get most of the stores for my cashback and for the domes through them. Well, now, probably, a minority, but a lot. A very cool company, have been in this business for a long time, we have been friends and communicate for a long time. I sometimes speak at their conferences. But they have 5000 stores, and we have 60, almost 70 thousand unique ones. Well, what's the point for me to climb into Admetat, CJ, Rokuten Advertising, Selection, if I just get money in one place as a blogger.
And this thing, it was born out of my own needs, you know? Like we would go somewhere, do something purely for the sake of money, well, there’s probably no such thing. But let’s create this business so that it brings us money.
Interviewer:
Well, like open a flower shop, yeah. Like why? Why a flower shop, right?
Pavlovich:
Well, all of our projects are somehow connected to our current operational activities, you know?
An application for bloggers from Pavlovich.
Interviewer:
Listen, what will be in your new Mesh application, which is also being made for bloggers?
Pavlovich:
Well, it also grew out of our needs, yeah. I’ll tell you the truth about how it was. When I had already been on YouTube for a couple of years, I saw that Dud, Pivovarov’s editorial staff, Krasava, and some other people had some applications. They advertised it in one or two videos, and I went to look at the app. Well, I still have some of them on my phone. Lebedev, by the way, had another one. So, some company just made apps for them. Basically, it's just a certain blogger built into the app.
That is, it's like a YouTube app, only they don't show you all your bloggers, but only one. And the only good thing about that app, in principle, was that they would send push notifications that such and such a channel had a new video, and you just, when you're subscribed to a lot of people on YouTube, you don't notice them, there's a whole stream of them, you don't even look at them.
Interviewer:
No, you don't notice.
Pavlovich:
But here specifically from the app, that such and such a favorite blogger of yours had a video, and I looked at what the app was. And then there were the Clubhouse times, and we were there, well, there was a pandemic, everyone was sitting at home, and we talked to a lot of people in Clubhouse, with all sorts of cool, well, the most active guys. There was a lot of gypsy info there later, but we talked to all sorts of cool dudes, many from the startup sphere. And a guy came and said, I want to make a custom app for bloggers. I tried it here and there. I said, well, how do you make a custom app?
Well, there’s one food blogger, one, I don’t know, a fitness blogger, you. Well, you make one for everyone, then support them, it’s just hell. Keep them up to date in stores, yes, solve the problems of 200-300 apps, it’s hell. Although now I know...
Interviewer:
Agency business.
Pavlovich:
Yes, I know companies now, three companies, I studied them last week. Very expensive companies, from 30 to 60 million dollars in investments each, they allow you to make a custom app, but it is mainly for brands, communities, you know, an app for your community. But we went the other way, we made an app for influencers. What's the problem? Look, a real example, I think you will have the same. I have a million on YouTube, let's say, a little less.
I have 74 thousand on Instagram, 300 people visit my site per day, that is, the fact that I have some kind of book, or a congratulatory video, or something else, most of them don't even know from my YouTube, you know? It's hard to advertise everything everywhere, that's it. There are no clickable links on Instagram, only on stories, and so there is a kind of discommunication. I would like, for example, for people to learn about all my products in one place. In order to, for example, sponsor me, yes, that is, someone must download Patreon, for my stories someone must download Instagram, for posts there read the site, my merch is bought in third place, my videos are watched in fourth, podcasts and audio are listened to in fifth, if I want a fan meeting or a concert tomorrow, this is in sixth place,
Video congratulations, if I want to congratulate someone there for money, like Barack Obama, Schwarzenegger does, I am also often asked, I just did it for free. You need to download Aprilka Cameo. And it turns out that it is difficult for a blogger to create these tools. Why did we earn a lot on YouTube? Because I have about 15 different units for earning. A site, merch, publics, Telegram channels, in general, a lot of everything. But to create it, it took 4 years, about 1050 dollars.
And to keep it up to date is even more difficult. Somewhere the payment system fell off, somewhere there was a DOS attack, well, you basically know firsthand. And for a blogger who is especially young, well, it is unrealistic to create all this, he just does not even realize that I can have a site with referral links, and I can release clothes, and I can record a soundtrack and sell it. And so we decided to combine everything in one place, and this app Mesh was born. It has already been launched, it is now in the stores, yes, but for Android so far, though, when your video comes out.
And now we are just conducting its ICO in crypto, because there will also be a blockchain, blockchain is needed for the transparency of the transaction, I can buy advertising from you in the form of NFTs, so that it is recorded that I bought from you at that time. Or, for example, I promised that I would pay everyone who would stay until the end of my stream, two tokens, for example. That's what blockchain is for.
But it is also needed for investments in bloggers, to make a transparent mechanism for investing in bloggers, because there are companies that, let's say, buy out your monetization, your revenue from YouTube, yes, for years to come, they figuratively give you a million dollars now, they will accelerate very easily, that is, your credit rating is transparent, they see how much you earn on average per month from YouTube over the years, and they tell you, let's give you a million right away, but we will take from you, I don't know, well, one and a half times more, but spread it out over time.
And they give you this loan, and such companies, which I read about two years ago as startups that themselves attracted the first money, they already have 700 million dollars, a billion dollars under management, which they distribute to influencers in the form of loans. And we combine all this in one application, that's what blockchain is for. And we are doing ICOs simply because we are already tired of our own, we just have too many projects to conduct on our own. One. And secondly, well, we could have continued to conduct on our own, launch them. We need large sums for marketing, one.
And secondly, to make an iPhone and so on. But still more ICOs are not because of the money, but so that the community. That is, all these hamsters that you told me, notcoins and so on, the community. And when you have a huge community, well, like huge, any, of any size, the bigger the better, on Discord, on TikTok, on Instagram, in Telegram channels, in chats, then you already appear completely differently to investors, at least for the crypto sphere, at least for venture capitalists, you are already much more interesting.
Well, we also need blockchain there, you know what, well despite the fact that this is really a need, but we are specifically launching on BSC, on Binance Smart Chain in order to simply offer Binance, yes, also a share in our business, because, well, firstly, they will be able to
spin up a lot of their advertising on our bloggers, yes, all sorts of pre-rolls and so on, firstly, and secondly, they will simply recoup these investments on commissions very, very quickly. That's all.
Interviewer:
Smart coupling to go to Binance. And when will it be possible to test?
Pavlovich:
At least tomorrow. Maybe wait until it is in the Apple Play Market, I think this is a week or two, probably. We are already ready, we have probably even uploaded it today, it's just that moderation will start there now, well, it's not that easy to upload an application. Yesterday I was uploading an application on the dome, they tell me, why are you collecting emails there, well, and so on. So, there's a whole bunch of bureaucratic paperwork to upload one harmless dome app to the App Store.
Interviewer:
In short, friends, when the app comes out, we'll leave a link in the description.
Pavlovich:
Well, by the way, we implemented a cool thing there. You see, we have a process there, a business process. We don’t need installs for the sake of installs. We don’t care at all, we’re not ready, like Yandex.Food, to pay Admetad 1,500 rubles for one install. We give the blogger 15, in fact, even 20. There’s also crowdfunding, an auction of rare blogger items. You take your balance on NOS-Zero, he takes it and sells it. Will the laptop be tomorrow, right?
And in fact, just because the laptop is yours with your sticker, you can sell a used one for more than a new one. So, there’s an auction of rare blogger items, crowdfunding, that is, everything you can imagine. Competitions, organizing concerts, events, all in one app. And in connection with this, that we give the blogger all this irreplaceable toolkit, yes, which he simply is not even physically able to create, the market there too, you can put up any of your physical, electronic things
for sale, there is a book, merch, video greetings, an advertising slot, whatever you want, a video call with you, a meeting, you put everything in one section, and there is also a section I recommend for the CPA hunter. The CPA hunter, in principle, was born for this too. You just take a referral, make it for some boat, put it on a chandelier, on a teapot, on whatever you want. In connection with this, that we give the blogger such a huge, vast, irreplaceable toolkit, we understand that we simply do not need people.
That is, it is in the blogger's interests to bring as much of his audience there as possible, to put a dollar or five for a subscription to Meshchin, so that they pay, so that he has a constant cash flow, so that nothing prevents him from creating, earning even more, and not going.
Interviewer:
The full functionality of Onlyfance is only for normal guys.
Pavlovich:
Yes, and in connection with this, of course, there is also a referral program. A referral program, because we understand how our marketing is built. Someone will write about us, okay, but we do not need installs, we need bloggers. Bloggers who will simply tell their audience about it, install it. And, accordingly, all the marketing, that is, this requires money, quite a lot, but this is simply for sales, in fact. We need to reach out to bloggers, that is, in those places where they have already gathered and live, you understand?
And that's why we also made a referral program, for example, which we will give to producers, owners of music labels, owners of TikTok houses, so that today the TikToker is yours, and tomorrow he is gone, but this way you connect him to us through revka and always have a fairly significant share of our earnings. And we understand that there, for example, we will definitely not be able to reach Cristiano Ronaldo, right? But it is quite possible to reach his agent, and we tell the agent, listen, connect him, well, this is such an exaggerated example, but in general, connect him to us, and you will constantly have money through referrals.
Well, that's roughly the marketing system there.
Interviewer:
Well, it should spread virally, yes, from blogger to blogger, from producer to producer, yes, who grows new YouTubers, YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagrammers there, Telegrammers, it can work everywhere, you can upload Telegrams, because in the same Telegram there is no superspasimo and others like in YouTube. And you can’t thank the author of the channel, although they seem to have made stars now, but it would be cool if Telegram bloggers, this is also a large audience, they would upload, as it were, to your appendix.
Pavlovich:
But we discussed this, so it will be, because why, for example, in Telegram there is no organic tatraf, yes, that is, there is no search, that’s it. And for Telegram bloggers, who benefit from it, he has already created the content. So we are simply supporters of the fact that the same video, the video that we will release or is released on the channel, we use it there 15-20 times. We'll cut it into shorts, tik-toks, youtube reels, youtube shorts, instar-reels, zen, vk, linkedins and so on, where they reused one video 15-20 times.
And in the same way, in Prilka, let's say, the admin of a Telegram channel, he has already created a post, he threw it into his Telegram channel, in the same way he can throw an ikna into Prilka, the only difference is that Telegram will not pay him for it, if he does not have a direct advertiser, then he will not get anything, and we have advertising in the right places, either banners, or
something is sold through referral links, and he can earn many times more money from this, more than from Telegram, and the content is the same.
Interviewer:
So the creator will share the profit from advertising with you for his free post, which is not by subscription? Yes, yes. This is a real thrill, that is, he doesn't worry about finding an advertiser, like Binance, for example, who will never come to him if he has 5,000 subscribers, 500 and then maybe they'll talk, but with viewing these banners, for example, yes, he can expand his profits with you. Cool model, cool.
Pavlovich:
But, most likely, banners will be at first, yes, until we develop some kind of normal recommendation system, well, there are already developments in this regard, that is, you can be there, yes, even with your 500 subscribers, but we know the full portrait of your audience, we understand who you are, what topic you are blogging about, and we see the age and gender composition and by geo, we see who your subscribers are and we will show them a banner to your female part, I don’t know,
Lamoda, we will show the male part a booking or some kind of hunting store, let’s say, and of course it’s more profitable, yes, well, what’s there, we will share, let’s say, with the community admin money from Google or Yandex, for example. We also recently earned money from Yandex Zen, 500 thousand rubles or more, just on the same principle, you run some popular block of yours on Yandex.Zen, they just insert advertising banners there,
well, from this, from Yandex directly, from the contextual network, and they are on this crap, on Yandex.Zen we earned less now, and we earned 500 thousand rubles on Easy in general, yes, 500 thousand rubles is 5000 dollars, and they will be able to do exactly the same with us, but most likely it will be more profitable just later not these banners of Yandex and Google, but when there is a recommendation system, to sell some goods directly by links, because, I don’t know, booking, here booking, for example, is cool, a travel blogger will have a link to booking.
Booking doesn't pay much for the referral program, 4%, but the average bill is 1000 euros, that is, 40-80 euros from one purchase, and why would a blogger need 1000 clicks for one cent, yes, 10 dollars, if he can earn 40, 80, 160 dollars and so on from two purchases together with us. And that's a completely different story. Why do we, well, naturally, this is an app, it's a priority now, it's, let's say, the apogee.
Mesh is the apogee of our entire, probably, business career in the field of influencer marketing and blogging.
Isn't it too late to go to YouTube now?
Interviewer:
We will test it. And I think that soon links to Mesh will appear in my description, I hope. Listen, but Mesh is for influencers. And the question is how to become an influencer. If we ask about YouTube, is it too late, in your opinion, to go on YouTube? Because many say that the platform is already overheated, there are a lot of bloggers, if you don’t go, there won’t be any views. What do you think, isn’t it too late to go on YouTube in 2025?
Pavlovich:
Here we can draw an analogy with writing. Like Tolstoy or Chekhov, who said there, if you can’t write, don’t write. Then these graphomaniacs are of no use to anyone, not to the publishing house, not to anyone. The same thing on YouTube, if you can’t film, don’t film. You need to come there who has something to say, who is some kind of confident professional in any field, or who is able to entertain the audience well,
that is, with some of their skills, I don’t know, telling jokes beautifully, making jokes, that’s why stand-up comedy has taken off on YouTube, yes, because, well, it’s interesting. Some people collect a lot of songs, music channels about nature, about charity, by the way, in Russia it is especially popular, a lot of them, like Samsara and so on, there is Vasiana Senya, they collect millions of views of each video, the interview is relevant, niche interviews are more
on the topic of business, yes, but again not some specific one, as you tried to immediately shoot only about SEO, but business in general, that is, to expand the niche, when there is something to tell you, or you know how to entertain, or you just understand in the gray how to make money on the monetization of some channels with cuts, with shorts, with music, with these musical video broadcasts non-stop, multi-day. That's when you need to come to YouTube.
Either you have your own life story, or you became famous in another business, I don’t know, figuratively Tinkov, he lived without business secrets, yes, he became famous in his other business and, accordingly, well, they go for people like that. If tomorrow Cristiano creates his own channel on YouTube, well, fifty million will immediately subscribe on the first day, or even a hundred and a hundred and fifty million in a week. That is, it is quite understandable. These are the kind of people who can and should come to YouTube.
Another question is that strong professionals, they do not understand how to do this, you have to work for it, that is, they need some really good production teams around them, but most often it turns out that these info-gypsies come in and there with some desire to organize the sale of courses for him, and that’s where it all ends. The same Tsadzare, if we look, there is this one, I just know the producer with whom he works, Here is a doctor, yes, it would seem he is a doctor, but there, I don’t know, his start on YouTube was twice as fast as mine, or even three times faster. In a couple of years, he has a million plus subscribers on Instagram, God knows how many. I sometimes watch his videos with interest.
How can a newbie quickly start making money from YouTube.
Interviewer:
Well, he is interesting, a charismatic good friend. Listen, but if you don’t have a medical background, like Oleg Tinkov, yes, did you decide to go to YouTube? Well, for example, you learned how to shoot videos, well, there may even be some producer, not for millions there. What advice would you give to aspiring influencers, bloggers in terms of making money? How can you quickly start monetizing your channel and at what point should you start doing this?
Pavlovich:
Well, I have a YouTube channel, a Telegram channel about YouTube, that's what it's called, about YouTube. I basically put everything there, everything I knew, well, the most interesting. I rarely rush there now, because I've already laid out all my experience. But, the link is in the description, but do everything comprehensively, that is, if you run YouTube, then you should have Instagram, and Telegram channels, and so on. You link to each other everywhere so that your traffic runs in circles.
It doesn't matter what the entry point was from YouTube, whether it went to your Telegram or TikTok, or vice versa, from TikTok got to your YouTube. Cross-linking, using the same material dozens of times, both in full video format, as well as in short vertical video format, in text format, that is, we transfer many interviews there in the form of a superscript, we conduct, yes, in the public there in the form of a website and the same audio podcast, the audio track is separated from its own
video and that's it, please, you post it, and I have a manual, I wrote for a long time, for example, how to post an audio track in one place, there on SoundCloud, how to make it so that it automatically gets into all podcasts, there, Yandex.Music, VK.Music, Google.Podcast, Apple, Spotify and so on. Here, to do it in a complex, to create a lot of traffic-generating platforms, to loop them to each other, but first of all to understand that this is a process for years, that is,
it is for years and possibly for decades, and maybe not for one, and do you need it, but in order for you to be able to do all this, you should have monetization built up from the first days on YouTube, you should understand where the money comes from, that is, you should either advertise some of your products, your companies, services, let's say, or some partners whom you know, or by broadcast links there from Admit, and better from our CP Hunter, post some products and sell them there under the video, that is, and advertising formats you can on our channel people about look at all
the advertising formats that we use and apply there because if maybe you even shoot and successfully and there are a lot of abandoned channels with half a million, a million, 5 million subscribers, they just didn't have, well, like, money to do exactly creativity constantly and they abandoned because they have to go to work.
You know, I am absolutely convinced that in a year of working on a channel, well, in any topic, in a year you can easily provide yourself with, well, 10-20 thousand, well, let it be 10 thousand dollars, you will be able to provide yourself with a constant semi-passive income on YouTube in a year of work, that's all.
What can you make money on on the Internet now.
Interviewer:
Got it. Good plan, guys, write it down. First, think about monetization, then start filming. Think right away how you will monetize it. One more thing about final earnings. If not YouTube, is there money on the Internet?
Pavlovich:
In general, yes, and they are all lying somewhere. Firstly, they are in influencer marketing, the market is big, that is, everything related to bloggers. Even bigger money is in e-commerce, that is, the sale of goods, the automation of everything. There is even a startup, every day I read a certain resource about all sorts of startups. He solved the problem of returning goods to stores, especially expensive ones.
He takes these things, I don’t know, from Balentjaga and either brings the Balentjaga branded packaging into a marketable condition, restores the new one, steams, irons and either returns it to Balentjaga, they sell it, or sells it himself on platforms supported by all sorts of good things. Investments of about 100 million dollars in this enterprise. Therefore, e-commerce, influencer marketing, marketing in general, advertising, traffic arbitrage and everything that saves people time and money, that is, cashbacks, coupons, all sorts of AIs, chat bots and so on, accounting automation, API.
Now we buy from us for blogger-chairs, we need to use, constantly pull the YouTube, Instagram and so on apps, yes. How would we write all this our own, but now we understand that it is easier for us to pay one office that has collected 800 apps under its hood. Just think about it, 800 apps, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and everything we can imagine from the apps. And they take data from them, and they unified it, brought it into a single form.
And even what we wrote ourselves, it’s easier for us to break and take from them, I don’t know, pay one cent per request.
Traffic from YouTube is undervalued.
Interviewer:
What are your favorite sources of traffic, if you make money on the Internet? Where does it attract traffic from? Of course, it’s probably some kind of influence.
Pavlovich:
My favorite is YouTube, because, firstly, we have a lot of our own traffic, we have probably 5 channels on YouTube now that generate traffic. This is the first point, secondly, I spent in the summer, last fall, 20 thousand dollars on advertising one service there on Instagram and Telegram, well, on Instagram everything was completely wrong, 10 thousand dollars went, on Telegram it was a little better, 8 thousand dollars
went, two thousand were recouped, but the best is on YouTube, especially with the right audience, that is, you need to clearly understand this blogger, even the one you watch, he has Shikhman of the channel "Pogovorit", we recently talked about advertising there. A very good channel, I sometimes watch it myself, but in any case, what I want to advertise to her audience will not go well, because she has 80 or whatever percent of the female audience there. My goods are still slightly different services, that's it. Well, YouTube, of course, is number one, because it is not overrated, on the contrary, it is an underrated source and it is long-lasting.
If a blogger has a video that has flown in, yes, I have a video that has gained 2 million views, which even now, four years later, 500 people a day watch it every day, even after 4 years, that's a lot, and accordingly, YouTube constantly brings you clients, that's why, well, naturally, YouTube advertising is my favorite, but it's the advertising that you order from influencers somewhere, and because YouTube
the advertising that you unscrew is just to well through the Google advertising account yes, it rather harms especially young channels if you start pouring YouTube advertising on a young channel this has already been tested on my channels and on friendly ones, on any others, that it simply kills your algorithms, it does not give you organic traffic at all. Why? If you have enough money, you are already constantly paying Google.
Other sources of traffic.
Interviewer:
And what other sources besides YouTube do you like?
Pavlovich:
Now you see, the problem is that online advertising is very expensive, really, that is, when I started on cashback, I used to pour advertising there from Yandex, from Google, from KMSka and so on, one client cost me from 50 cents to 2 dollars, now, but if you fit into 10, it’s good, because people constantly see advertising from all over the place, they’re tired of it, so now there are already many different platforms that serve to build an
offline advertising channel, that is, the automation of all kinds of offline advertising campaigns, it seems to me that this is very promising, plus a new trend has appeared, several platforms, this is very, well, a really complex technical exercise, several platforms that allow you to place your advertising with micro-influencers on the Institute, on YouTube and so on, because my budgets, let’s say, not every advertiser can handle, and you may have, I don’t know, 5 thousand adherents, subscribers, but they are more involved, they are there with you from the first day, you are still, well, there are not millions of them.
And their advertising, well, let's say, with a microblogger or 10 microbloggers, It can be twice as cheap as mine, and at the same time twice as effective. I would probably even put microinfluencers in first place now in terms of advertising effectiveness.
Is SEO dead?
Interviewer:
Cool. Send me the platform later, take a look, I haven't even been keeping track of it. What do you think about SEO? Is SEO still alive or is SEO dead?
Pavlovich:
Well, yes, it is alive. As part of my job, I monitor all sorts of sites in coupon shops, cashbacks, and so on, which are important to me. And most of them, who are the top in earnings and so on, have the majority of their traffic from SEO. This is very cool. Old sites took their places a long time ago, but SEO is very good. After all, even some bookmaker pays you for SEO, let's say, they pay 80 dollars, for example, or 200 from one client.
And if a person came from SEO, that is, he himself was looking for what he needed, some bookmaker's office, or something else, They can pay you not 200, let's say, but 400, 500, 600, 800 for such a person simply because he is just, well, super targeted. Therefore, SEO, well, is alive, alive and well, but my sites, well, you know, some of them pump 20 thousand a day of traffic, yes, and some young sites I just can't get 20 people a day there.
That is, the sandbox is really visible from the leaked Google documents, this works really well for young sites.
Interviewer:
You'll go through the sandbox now, yes.
Pavlovich:
And how long does this sandbox last, by the way, in your opinion?
Interviewer:
Listen, well, I think somewhere between six months and a year. But if you pour in all sorts of trust, yes, traffic, direct type-in, yes, from YouTube, then I think the time can be reduced. Six months to a year somewhere, you just have to wait. In Seva, the patient ones also win, yes, this is also not a sprint, it's a marathon, like YouTube.
Write in the comments what the most interesting thought, quote from Seryozha, insider insight you got from this interview. Hugs, bye.
