The affiliate marketing industry has grown by leaps and bounds in 2020. With people now preferring to shop online now more than ever, it is only expected that the affiliate marketing industry will grow in the future.
The affiliate marketing sector is already worth $12B, and is growing rapidly. According to HostingTribunal, it was reported that almost 81% of global brands rely on affiliate marketing in order to get the word across about their products and services. Needless to say, the future looks good.
In order to shed some light on the rapidly growing industry, Cloudways organized a chat session with Luke, the guy behind the affLIFT affiliate marketing forum. It is a fantastic forum that offers lots of insights and information, including traffic source guides, campaign case studies, and a lot more.
Here’s the first question.
How did your journey in affiliate marketing start? What was the idea behind starting your own affiliate marketing forum?
Q1: How did your journey in #affiliatemarketing start? What was the idea behind starting your own #affiliate marketing forum? @LukeKling #CWChat pic.twitter.com/I6EXA7cZ2t
— Cloudways (@Cloudways) September 17, 2020
I started with affiliate marketing about 18 years or so ago. My journey has been interesting. I built and sold websites. I monetized some of my sites through affiliate marketing. I became an Affiliate Manager for one of the top affiliate networks.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
I left that network to work for a new network. We turned that into one of the top affiliate networks. And, now I work full-time as an affiliate and the owner of one of the top affiliate marketing forums.https://t.co/sXBSKhsGfW
I’ve done it all 😃
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
The reason I started my affiliate marketing forum, affLIFT, is because I could see there was a gap in the market. There were free forums and expensive forums. There wasn’t a forum/community where your average person starting in affiliate marketing could afford to join…
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
and actually learn how to make money with affiliate marketing.
Today, we’re the most active affiliate marketing forum in the world 🚀
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
In our second question, We tried to get some more insights about affLIFT and its usefulness among newbies in affiliate marketing.
As the Director of Marketing for one of the top affiliate networks in the world, I realized that there was really a lack of useful and actionable information for newbie affiliates.
We solved that problem with affLIFT.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
We have hundreds of guides, case studies, and example affiliate campaigns that newbies can follow and use to decrease their learning curve.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
We also have an amazing Beginners Course specifically created to help teach newbies the fundamentals of running a successful affiliate campaign.https://t.co/iWaUYjcX8y 🚀
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
We further asked Luke about the mistakes he has observed affiliates tend to make in 2020.
1) Having unrealistic expectations. You WILL NOT be profitable on your first affiliate marketing campaign. If you are, it’s more luck than anything else. Understand that affiliate marketing is hard and it takes time to develop the skills and understanding needed to be successful.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
2) Not taking action. Yes, it’s important to read and learn. That’s why I built @affLIFT.
BUT, you can only learn so much by reading. The best way to learn affiliate marketing is to actually take action.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
We created the Beginners Course as a way for affiliates to take action right away and learn through experience without having to worry about spending too much or losing too much money.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
3) Not actually tracking their campaigns. It’s important to learn how to actually track, analyze, and optimize your affiliate marketing campaigns. Taking action is super important, but if you aren’t collecting as much data as possible on every campaign you run, you are wasting..
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
your time and money. Find a good tracking solution. We typically recommend BeMob (@bemobtrk) because they have a great free plan and amazing support: https://t.co/5mJbbgSfCL 🚀
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
How do you see 2021 with respect to affiliate marketing?
I did not expect 2020 to be anything like it has been so predicting the future does not appear to be my biggest strength.
However, I am very optimistic for the future of affiliate marketing. We are seeing many large public companies invest into our industry.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
We’ll see new traffic channels open up and new opportunities pop up. My goal is to make affLIFT the place to find out what those opportunities are before everyone else so we can stay ahead of the curve 😃 🔮 💰
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
Extremely beneficial and merchants are finally starting to notice it! 😆
We have 40,000 potential affiliates in our community. People who ARE LOOKING FOR UNIQUE OPPORTUNITIES.
Obviously, you need to offer something worthwhile.
If you do, it should be a great source for $20 🤑
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
Our Fifth question was about the importance of the hosting industry for the affiliates, especially during an ongoing pandemic.
Hosting will always be a HUGE deal for online business. There’s a reason awesome hosting companies like Cloudways offer amazing affiliate programs. Every new business NEEDS an online presence and that should start with their own website. As an affiliate, it’s a big opportunity.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
Hosting affiliate programs like the one provided by Cloudways have huge commissions because the retention rate is high once you get someone signed up under you. I’ve used several hosting companies for over 7 years 😃
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
So, as an affiliate, you should be thinking about opportunities where you can package hosting with another unique angle to not only get that hosting commission, but funnel that customer to other opportunities once they’ve got their new hosting setup.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
What affiliate marketing channels would you recommend to affiliates for a better ROI?
As media buyers, we’re focused on 3 main channels with affiliate marketing right now:
✅ Push notifications
✅ PPV (pops and redirect traffic)
✅ Native adsROI depends on the campaign, but we’re seeing many members with huge success with these channels.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
Typically, we recommend newbies start with PPV though and that’s the focus of our Beginners Guide as well.
Push has HUGE volume in most GEOs and allows you to presell which “pushes” up the conversion rate 🚀
Native is for experienced affiliates wanting to scale.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
Our next question was with respect to affiliate campaigns.
Understanding how to analyze and optimize the results of your affiliate campaigns is the most important factor.
Let’s say I am advertising using 5 different Cloudways banners on 10 different websites using 3 different landing pages.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
We have a lot of different potential combinations there.
❓ Which banner is actually getting the clicks?
❓ Which landing page is driving the conversion?
Once you figure out how to properly track and analyze your campaigns, you will see the best ROI 📈
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
What is the proper attribution rule where cookies get overwritten throughout the user journey?
In the affiliate programs that I actually run myself (like the one on @affLIFT and @FPTraffic), we attribute the referral in our database as soon as the user registers.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
We store everything we can in a cookie as well, but with the changes in browser technology and privacy settings, it’s important to try to store attribution on the software level.
By storing a referral in our database, we can attribute the commission to the referrer…
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
2 years after the person registers if that’s how long it takes for them to actually pay for their membership 😃
Make sure your affiliates are getting credit/commission for their referrals/sales.
Without it, your program is going nowhere fast.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
Our second last question was with regard to affiliate management.
Automation is becoming more and more important. 🤖
Not necessarily because anything has changed in marketing that makes automation more important, but because all of your competitors are now using it.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
For the most part, you can manually do just about anything that automation provides at the tracking level. But, automation makes it easier and quicker.
If your competitors are automating their processes, you better too.
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
Absolutely. The whole point of automation should be to increase efficiency.
If you’re automating to automate, you’re doing it wrong.
Purpose driven automation opens up time. Time is our most valuable asset right? 😃
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
Last question. Whom would you like to recommend for our next #CWChat session?
I recommend talking to my friend Manu (@emanuelcinca).
He runs the #1 daily newsletter for marketers and knows his stuff! https://t.co/xS0kqCdmQJ
— Luke 🚀 (@LukeKling) September 17, 2020
We hope that you have found this #CWChat session useful and informative with regards to affiliate marketing in 2020 & 2021. The future of affiliate marketing looks bright!
Thank you once again, Luke Kling, for being our guest for the live #CWChat session.
If you feel that we missed out on any question, do let us know in the comments below.
