Golden Goose is starting a series of interviews with affiliate marketing influencers. Our first guest is Luke Kling, the most renowned name in affiliate marketing and the AffLIFT forum founder.
In the interview, Luke shared his insights on the most exciting affiliate ad formats, verticals, and GEOs, plus revealed his career secrets!
Yes, affiliate marketing was much different when I first got started. The industry continues to evolve, and one of the things I like about it is the constant change.
Smartphones were definitely not in use when I first started. In fact, I remember when most offers were not even mobile optimized and when advertisers had no idea what “mobile optimized” meant! You would open a landing page for an offer on your phone and all the text would be tiny because you were looking at the desktop version of the site that had no mobile optimization.
Despite all the changes, there are some things that are still the same today. Pop ups have been a popular ad format for as long as I can remember. However, Facebook Ads and push notifications did not exist.
Most of the focus when I first started was around Google Ads and organic traffic. I got my first affiliate conversion on a Google Ad campaign! 🚀
mVAS is one of my favorite verticals. It's competitive, but there is a pretty wide selection of offers/angles available.
I love social media traffic. I actually own a social media marketing tool (FPTraffic.com) and have an audience of over 3,500,000 fans on social media. But, when it comes to affiliate marketing, I do not think it is the best source anymore.
Push notifications are probably one of my favorite ad formats right now. Push is the perfect ad format for affiliate marketing because, just like affiliate marketing, it has evolved and changed, but it’s still alive and refuses to die. I also recommend all affiliates get their hands dirty with some native traffic. Native is the rocketship we’re all going to end up on.
The purpose of affLIFT is to open up the opportunities available from affiliate marketing to everyone who wants to do it. You get access to the companies (like Golden Goose), the tools, and the information to be successful.
As we’ve grown, I’ve realized that not only can affLIFT provide access to those opportunities, but we can create some of our own for the industry. For example, we hold massive contests where affiliates are paid to run campaigns.
And, we’ve become a platform for the industry. My goal is to make a membership to affLIFT essential to anyone who wants to become a successful affiliate 🚀
Over the past four years, I have converted affLIFT from a fun project to a source of income, and finally to an actual business.
It is my main source of income, and I am very happy with the money I make from it. I have two young daughters, and affLIFT has become a lifestyle business for me that allows me to spend most of my time with my kids and the rest of my time doing something I really enjoy (affiliate marketing).
I quit on good terms with the first affiliate network I was working for when I went to college. I did not want to have to worry about managing affiliate accounts when I started college because I wanted to focus on school, and I did not need the money.
Well, the last affiliate account that was assigned to me before I took my leave ended up being one of the biggest affiliate accounts I would have ever managed. He did over $6,000,000 in revenue over the next two years while I was in school on leave. As his manager, I would have been paid a hefty commission on his revenue. Instead, I was going broke in college 😜
But, once I rejoined the industry, I became one of the top Affiliate Managers in the world, so it all worked out 😃
Push is the perfect ad format for affiliate marketing.
I’m honestly not sure what is going to boom. I think lead generation will always be popular in our industry because it’s cheaper for companies to just pay us for leads than buy the traffic themselves (and pay a team to do the media buys).
I am not a firm believer in the crypto movement, and I think that it will be less and less prevalent in the future. I’m @LukeKling on Twitter if the crypto bros want to tell me I’m wrong 👍
I know the industry is super popular in Russia, India, and other countries, but about 50% of our membership at affLIFT is in the US, and when I worked for PeerFly, we had similar numbers (we had over 400,000 affiliates there, and there are now over 70,000 on affLIFT).
It is definitely still profitable for affiliates. We see winning campaigns posted on affLIFT in the mVAS vertical all the time. It’s competitive, but there is a pretty wide selection of offers/angles available. My other favorite vertical is Dating.
Being misleading is different from outright fraud, but it’s also a serious issue because it always impacts the quality of the lead generated. Affiliates like to get creative, but sometimes that can really come back to bite you.
There will always be fraud and misleading information in the affiliate industry, but the better we do as an industry to try to decrease these things, the better opportunities will be available for everyone.
The purpose of affLIFT is to open up the opportunities available from affiliate marketing to everyone who wants to do it.
If you are new, you need to join affLIFT. Then, you should go through our Beginner and Intermediate Course, which focuses on pops. I explained above why I like pops, but in my opinion, it is the most newbie-friendly ad format. You will literally be pointed to everything you need to read and watch.
As for influencers, those are also on affLIFT. I recommend @Nick, @Varun, @servandosilva, and @DEADZ (those are their affLIFT usernames, and you can follow them on the site).
Also, I am an open book. If you have any questions about affiliate marketing, you can message me on affLIFT, and I will be happy to answer (whether you are a paid member or not). Just register, and you’ll get an automated message from me that you can reply to. I reply within an hour in most cases.