Hey You bloggers we are back again with another stunning interview. As part of our BloggersIdeas interview series, today we have Luke Kling from LukePeerFly.com who is extremely obsessed with Affiliate Marketing world, LukePeerFly.com (LPF) is his personal blog where he discuss affiliate marketing and other interests to help other affiliate marketers and entrepreneurs make more money online.
So lets begin the awesome interview !!!
Please introduce yourself to our readers. Can you tell us something about your blogging journey. How and when did you enter into blogging?
Hey everyone! My name is Luke Kling and I am the Director of Marketing for the affiliate network, PeerFly.com. I’ve been doing affiliate marketing, affiliate management, and blogging for about 10 years now.
I started blogging using Blogger in middle school. I’ve had many failed blogs and a few successful blogs. My most successful blog and the one I still write in still today is LukePeerFly.com
How do I get started with affiliate marketing if I am a complete newbie?
Before you get started in affiliate marketing I hope you have a few dollars you’re ready to lose. There is a pretty steep learning curve with affiliate marketing and no matter how much research you do, it’s likely you will lose some money when you’re first getting started and throughout your affiliate marketing career.
I’ve been doing it for years and I still lose money on campaigns often. However, when I find a winner, I know how to make it all worth it 🙂
So, where should you start as a newbie? I actually have an article on my blog that explains the path I recommend affiliates take as they progress and learn. You can find it at: http://www.lukepeerfly.com/traffic-sources-based-experience. Suppose I already have a website or blog with decent traffic.
How can I use affiliate marketing to monetize my site?
There are 2 ways I have had the most success monetizing my websites and blogs with affiliate marketing:
BUILD A LIST
My biggest regret with my blog is that I did not buy PopUp Domination and get an AWeber subscription on the day I launched my blog. I waited months before I started building my email list and PopUp Domination is an awesome WordPress plugin to increase your subscribers.
Start building your email list and then you can email your list with affiliate offers. Make sure you’re emailing them information and providing them value.
Then, I only recommend emailing offers that you yourself would buy or sign up for.
I’ve made over $2,000 several times with a few email blasts I’ve sent out. A SINGLE EMAIL. The best part? My email list grows daily from my organic traffic and PopUp Domination 🙂
BANNERS
Adding banners to your blog or website is easy. Most affiliate offers will have banners available and if they don’t you can always create your own or hire someone to create one for you. Finding the right banners and offers that your audience will be interested is the hard part.
Split test different offers/banners and keep track of what performs best. I use OIOPublisher for this. You can also sell ad space using OIOPublisher to advertisers who want to buy your banner spots on your blog/website.
Do you start by choosing an offer, and then building a website/email list/PPC campaign around it, or the other way around (i.e., first build a website or email list and then try to find suitable offers)?
It depends. I have several websites I’m always looking for offers to promote on. At the same time, if I see a new product/offer that I think has a lot of potential I’ll make a website (usually a squeeze page) around it and see how it performs. I also like building Facebook Pages around niches I am interested in and then I’ll use those Pages to funnel traffic to my own websites/mailing lists and monetize the traffic using that method as well.
Do you fear the possibility of web surfers having their browsers to auto-clean cookies at the end of every browsing sessions? What if this becomes a default feature on browsers?
Clickbank seems to be the big thing among affiliate marketers. Do you use it extensively as well, or most of the offers you promote come from other places?I’m not overly concerned about browsers deleting cookies.
It would put a dent in some of the potential earnings available, but why fear it? If it’s going to happen then it’s going to happen. You have to focus on what you can control.
ClickBank is great for digital products. We’re actually planning to try to get into that space with PeerFly over the next year. I use ClickBank to find some products that I promote. For example, I mentioned PopUp Domination earlier and I use CB to promote them and make money from my referrals. Why not? It’s a great product! 🙂
What was your first affiliate marketing success?
I believe my first real success from affiliate marketing was a 60’s Music CD package I promoted on AdWords. I setup a campaign on AdWords, went to dinner, and came back to find I’d generated quite a few sales and hardly spent anything.
That was back when AdWords was cheaper and more affiliate friendly.What blogs do you read in Affiliates? Tell me about an article you recently read that stuck out to you.
I actually have a blog aggregate I created to keep track of all my favorite blogs. It’s called affposts. Charles Ngo has been coming out with some awesome articles lately and I also really like Malan Darras’s blog. This article of his was AWESOME.
Do you believe that social media platforms can be used to promote affiliate offers? Can you explain it in brief ?
Social media can definitely be used to promote affiliate offers. I funnel traffic from my social media profiles to affiliate offers all the time. There’s a difference between doing some good marketing and simply spamming people. For example, I reach over 1,000,000 people a day on my Facebook Pages.
I’m able to maintain that because I provide a lot of value to them. In return, when I promote a RELATED product/website to them they’re very engaged.
How do you see the affiliate marketing industry changing in the next 5 years?
This question comes up all the time. 5 years ago no one was really pushing mobile. Today it’s one of the top source for affiliates. I have no idea what the future holds for the industry, but I’ll still be right here trying to make my next dollar.
What do you enjoy most about affiliate marketing?
The constant change. I really love learning new things and working to apply what I’ve learned. I’m also in a position where I get to meet a TON of brilliant affiliate marketers and I learn a lot from them. The industry is awesome.What tools do you use on daily basis?
I don’t actually have a ton of tools I use. I can get most of my work done in Google Chrome and Coda (code editor). I have my own tool called FPTraffic that I created that I use to manage my Facebook Pages and I’m working in that all the time.How do you find ideas for writing and what’s your process like?
Whenever I come up with an idea for an article I’ll put it in the notes on my phone. Then, at night I’ll create a new draft in my WordPress with all my ideas for the post. Basically, an outline.
I like writing at night so I’ll usually pick a draft that interests me and start writing out a rough draft and then the next day go back through, find graphics, and do a final publication.
What is the biggest mistake I can avoid starting out in Internet Marketing?
A lot of times new affiliates in the space will spread themselves too thin. They’ll basically try EVERYTHING. Another problem a lot of affiliates will run into is that they’ll buy every course they can find and try to learn everything at once. By the time they actually get around to running a campaign they’re out of money and burned out.
Find a source to try, create a campaign, analyze your results, optimize your campaign, and then run more traffic. You’ll lose money more than likely, but you’ll gain experience. Experience is much more effective than reading.
I hope you enjoy this amazing interview with Luke. If you have any questions or doubts please do ask in the comments below !
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