We are delighted to announce that Luke Kling of PeerFly has been voted as the #1 Affiliate Manager in the World as per our Winter 2012 Survey. One of the interesting things to note is that he actually received more votes than PeerFly itself, which was voted as the Top CPA Affiliate Network for the Winter 2012. This means that while some people voted for another CPA Affiliate Network, they still voted for him as the top affiliate manager. I think that says a lot about the loyalty of his affiliates and how he interacts with them.
We sat down with him briefly after telling him the good news that he was getting a $1k gift card from us, plus that out of thousands of votes, he was considered the top affiliate manager.
How does it feel to be named the #1 Affiliate Manager in the entire CPA industry?
I am very proud and excited to be named the #1 Affiliate Manager. I take my job very seriously and really enjoy working with my publishers so I find this as the ultimate pat on the back.
How did you get started in this industry?
When I was in high school I built and sold websites on DigitalPoint and SitePoint. Building websites has been a hobby of mine for awhile, but I was never really good at monetizing them so I just sold them to make money. My sophomore year I sold a website to Kevin De Vincenzi, the owner of XY7.com. Kevin and I stayed in contact after the sale and he seemed pretty impressed by me and hired me to manage his portfolio of websites. He explained to me how he wanted to monetize them using affiliate marketing and although I was not completely new to affiliate marketing, he was a network owner and experienced marketer so I “picked his brain” for everything it was worth. After a few months Kevin offered me a job working for XY7 as an Affiliate Manager and I happily accepted.
I worked for XY7 on two separate occasions from my sophomore year of high school until my sophomore year of college. During my sophomore year of college I accepted a new position as Affiliate Manager at PeerFly and the rest is history 🙂
What do you do special to keep in touch with your affiliates?
I manage our entire publisher base at PeerFly and we have over 25,000 active publishers. Keeping in touch with everyone is probably impossible, but I have been able to manage these accounts successfully by myself for over two years now. Our custom system at PeerFly helps a lot by automating many of the tasks I would normally have to do manually. For example, if you sign up as a publisher, but do not complete your application within a week you get a nice email from me offering to help you finish your application. I automatically send out hundreds of these emails every week and although I do have to follow up with publishers needing assistance, our system helps out a lot. Besides automation, I use social media to keep in touch. I have over 6,000 followers on Twitter (@LukePeerFly) and I tweet with publishers all day.
Over the past year I have also started my Affiliate Manager Blog (http://www.lukepeerfly.com). With my blog and my new newsletter (Affiliate Manager Exclusive: http://www.lukepeerfly.com/affiliate-manager-exclusive) I am able to assist and help publishers on a mass scale.
I’ve read that you provide a lot of training and advice to your affiliates. Can you give me examples of what you teach them about the industry that is different than most AMs do?
Providing training and advice for my publishers is a huge deal for me. Their success is my success. I do my best to provide them with the information they need to be successful and I do this a few different ways.
WarriorForum
We are probably one of the best represented affiliate networks on the WarriorForum. We are very “noob friendly” and our custom interface is easy to use so the affiliates on WarriorForum enjoy working with us. Of course, it’s a forum for affiliate marketing so there are a TON questions and ideas being thrown around. I try to be as active as possible in the discussion and provide any information I can to lead everyone in what I belive is the right direction.
LukePeerFly.com
I started my blog so I could help my publishers on a mass scale. I have covered pretty much every PeerFly related quesion a publisher might have, I am releasing case studies and landing page examples, and I am always covering different traffic sources that we are seeing success with.
What forums do you use? Which forum do you recommend for a beginner and which forum for veteran CPA affiliate?
I am currently active on 3 different affiliate marketing forums. The two I would suggest for beginners are WarriorForum.com and CPAFix.com. CPAFix.com is new, but new members are joining daily, other networks are getting active in the discussion, and a lot of good information is being shared.
Novice and experienced marketers need to join IMGrind. It’s a paid private community, but it’s owned by two guys that know their stuff and full of experienced marketers sharing high quality information. As I mentioned in my IMGrind review (http://www.lukepeerfly.com/imgrind-review) I used the information I found on one thread in IMGrind to make about $2,000 in just a few weeks after joining. It’s well worth the price.
What tool would you like see developed that would help your job as an Affiliate Manager easier?
I have been bugging Chad (PeerFly CEO) for a tool that will allow me to mass email my publishers by their ID, but haven’t gotten that one yet 🙂 Really, I just need a few more hours in the day. One of the things that really pushed me to start working for PeerFly was the custom interface. As a programmer, I know the power of being able to build your own tools. Our PeerFly team is dedicated and we have some of the best tools available to get the job done and the ones we don’t have are being created for us each day. When someone messages me on our live chat or calls my phone I have their information from their account in front of me before they even say hello. These tools make my job a lot easier, which is why PeerFly is probably the only network our size with one Affiliate Manager and why we have grown so quickly.
What type of offers would you advise affiliates to start focusing on and why?
Anyone who has heard of PeerFly knows we have email and zip submits. We have about 1,300 active offers and half of them are email and zip submits. We continue to add these offers daily because they are easy to get conversions on whether you are brand new to the industry or an experienced affiliate. However, we are continuing to diversify our offer selection outside of email submits. Our business development team is working hard to build great relationships with new clients on a daily basis. Some verticals we are focusing on are weight loss, dating, and insurance. People are always trying to lose weight, find a partner, and save money 🙂
What do you think that Peerfly offers that no other network can offer?
The industries #1 Affiliate Manager 🙂 But seriously, our growth has been tremendous since we first opened our doors just a few short years ago and we are continuing to grow at such a great rate because of the success of our publishers. We have a great team, a well built network, always pay on time, have a large amount of quality offers, and the support of the entire industry. I have a great relationship with a lot of our competitors, but I cannot say there is a single one that has the combination of great qualities I find in PeerFly.
What are you going to do with the prize money from the contest?
I told my publishers from the very beginning of this contest that I was going to take part of the money and use it to invest in testing new traffic sources so I can provide some case studies for them. I plan to do a few giveaways on my blog also as a way to give back. With the rest, I’ll probably take my wife out to dinner and put it towards my taxes from last year 🙂
