AGS MAGAZINE: Becoming the wolf

People usually save your name in their mobile contacts, but Maor Benaim’s was saved as “Maor Xbox” or “Maor PlayStation”. As young as 12, he started a business fixing Xboxes and PlayStations. Two decades later, Benaim is the CEO of The Wolf Marketing while managing multiple agencies, brands, and businesses.

The Xbox guy

Living in a small apartment and not having much financially motivated Benaim to aspire to a more comfortable life. He wasn’t a popular student and didn’t have many friends. “Starting a business was a way to show everyone that I am better than them or I can still win,” he says.

So at 12, his first step into business was fixing Xboxes and PlayStations, during which he learned to solder chips onto a motherboard. Even now, hundreds of people still know Benaim as the “Xbox or PlayStation guy”. He also had a subtitle website where people could download subtitles for movies or TV shows. Then he started building websites for small business owners long before Shopify, even building a CRM and full e-commerce system.

He got his breakthrough when he worked at a digital marketing agency for exactly 365 days. It was a very specific timeline and plan that he committed to. Not caring about things like meeting new friends or going on dates, he says, “All I did the moment I woke up until I fell asleep was just look for ways to connect with new people, learn new things, and see how I can crack it and make sure it works.”

Exactly one year later, he was running the agency and became the Chief Marketing Officer.

Within the company, he was essentially managing his own agency operation. Through hard work and dedication, his agency grew much bigger. It was more effective because he was hands-on; from finance and creative to media buying and sales, he did everything himself. With the success of his agency, that’s when he got into affiliate marketing. Eighteen years ago, policies were more lenient, and affiliates like Benaim were figuring things out as they went. There were no podcasts or guides to follow; whatever worked, worked, and whatever didn’t, didn’t.

Mixing up the salad

Like any other business owner, Benaim wasn’t spared from struggles and challenges along the way. In fact, he doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t face one. But the biggest challenge came when everything failed, and he felt stuck. He had been in that situation multiple times, both in his personal and business life, when whatever made him money suddenly stopped working. It felt like the end of an era. Each time, he had to reinvent himself or, in his own words, start “mixing up the salad”. He didn’t always know exactly what to do next, but knew he had to go out, talk to people, and start something again.

His experience over the years taught him how to replicate businesses that were already working and how to sell himself. The harder part was finding the right opportunity. Sometimes he succeeded. Sometimes he thought he had, only to leave it and move on to something else. Starting again is never easy. He compares it to going back to the gym after months away: the first time takes the most effort, but once you start, getting back into the routine becomes easier.

For Benaim, “Moving and creating momentum was much more important than just thinking about it in theory.”

A name people remember

Fast forward to 2026, Benaim is widely known as the “Wolf” in the affiliate marketing industry. He loved the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”, so the company name and his personal branding came out of it. With the industry growing and speaking engagements starting to come his way, he knew he needed a good name people would remember him by.

His multiple businesses and agencies, established name in affiliate marketing and challenges along the way all built up to what he wrote in his book, “Unleash Your Inner Wolf”. But if there’s one lesson from the book he wishes someone had told him ten years ago, it would be about the people you choose to do business with.

Integrity is very important to him. He believes that how someone behaves in their personal life can eventually reflect in how they do business. If there are already signs that someone can’t be trusted, it may only be a matter of time before those problems reach you too.That belief also shapes how Benaim thinks about making money. He sees two routes. One is the short route: make quick money by misleading people. The other is the longer, harder route: build partnerships that can make more money without burning your name.

Beyond his own businesses, Benaim says the bigger change over the past 18 years has been the affiliate marketing industry itself: “Every two to four years, the industry and the business model change almost completely.”

The lines have blurred, especially after the pandemic. Before, you were either an agency, worked internally or owned a brand. Now, it’s a big mix. It doesn’t matter as much whether you’re a business owner or an employee; many contracts today involve sharing a portion of the profits.

The unfair advantage

For people starting in affiliate marketing today, Benaim sees them learning more about the technical aspects of setting up funnels and using AI in media buying. But what most affiliates neglect is the personal connection aspect. To succeed nowadays, the big affiliates don’t just run campaigns from home; they go out, meet advertisers and negotiate better terms. He says, “When I run campaigns, I always make sure that I have an unfair advantage over other affiliates; otherwise, I don’t go for it.”

Benaim’s journey in affiliate marketing wasn’t easy, but he wouldn’t change it because he’s happy with where he is today, “I just love the result, and I love my life at the moment.”

Still, he thinks he could have suffered a little less by treating his journey more like a game and less like a national challenge.

Along the way came partnerships, friendships, and plenty of difficult experiences. Those experiences made Benaim quicker to recognise people he doesn’t trust and faster to cut them off. He wishes he could have avoided some of what he went through, but he knows that isn’t realistic.

This article was originally published in AGS Magazine. Explore the latest issue for more in-depth interviews, straightforward analysis and informed perspectives from across the affiliate and performance marketing industry.