Welcome to this exclusive interview with KJ Rocker, a well-known digital marketer and affiliate marketer with over a decade of experience in the industry. In this interview, we dive into KJ Rocker's journey, insights, and strategies on how to succeed in the digital marketing space, particularly in affiliate marketing. We explore his expertise in developing successful affiliate campaigns, his thoughts on the latest trends and innovations in the industry, and his advice for those looking to grow their online businesses.
In this interview, KJ Rocker shared his wealth of knowledge and experience and provided valuable insights into the world of digital marketing. We learned about his journey in the industry, his approach to affiliate marketing, and his thoughts on the future of the industry. KJ Rocker also offered practical advice and tips for those looking to build successful online businesses.
We hope you enjoy this interview and find it valuable for your digital marketing journey.
KJ Rocker
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Let's dive into this article...
KJ, take us through a little bit from where you got started, what’s your background story before you got into working online and how did you get into the affiliate marketing industry?
Hi! First of all, thanks for interviewing me and allowing me to share my thoughts with the Partnerkin readers.
I hail from a remote village in Pakistan, where I lived till I was 11 years old. I remember we used to be so poor that once we ran out of flour, so my grandad had to sell a cow to buy some flour and used to attend a school where there were no chairs or anything. So we used to sit on the floor and under the open sky in school.
As my father was in the army, we moved with my father to the city to get a better education ( Army used to provide discounted education for military kids ). Fast forward to 2009, I was on college break and wanted to kill time. So I joined a call center and started working on an outbound project where we used to cold call customers in the Uk, trying to generate Road Traffic Injury Leads. As I mentioned before, it was just a fun project, and I wasn't even getting paid well ( I was getting 2 000 PKR /month, around $7/month as per today's USD-PKR rate).
Suddenly my father had a heart attack at work, and because of that, he was hospitalized. We were already living hand to mouth, and his hospitalization required more financial resources, which we didn't have. So thinking about my family (In Pakistan, you are responsible for the whole family, not just yourself), I decided to take things into my own hands and tried working hard ( One shift at a software house (I knew HTML, so I found a job) and another at a call center. Those were the days when I used to wake up, Walk 3 miles to the hospital to see my father and look after him, Leave for my web development job around 11 PM and work there till 5 and afterward go for my next shift, which was at a call center covering almost 10 Miles each way, I can remember walking on the roads in cold December nights and asking passes for cigarettes ( Was a perfect way to stay warm).
Anyways, after all this hard work, I was still hardly making anything, and the most I got paid was $20/per month. Those were the lowest days in my life, and I was willing to do any work for money. I almost got into oil rig drilling (The only reason I didn't was that my internet earnings started picking up).
As I mentioned, my HTML skills and call center experience were good. So I used $10 out of my salary to buy an internet connection, created a freelancer.com account, and started bidding on projects related to HTML and call centers. Soon I got a project from a Chinese client, Where I was supposed to call CPA Networks and create affiliate network accounts. For every account, I was getting paid $40. He also gave me access to a course to understand CPA marketing and create accounts for him. I was happy I could finally make way more money by creating his accounts. I also got a few more projects and made a few hundred dollars. I asked my client to kindly give me hosting and a domain so I could start affiliate marketing for myself, and he gave me a free domain and hosting for 6 months which I used to spam yahoo answers and drive traffic to email-submit and Incentive offers.
From there, I built my budget for paid advertising and never looked back!
Could you tell us how you came up with the name KJ Rocker?
My full name is Khawar Jamil Ur Rasool. Which, as you can see, is long. For my clients, it was hard to pronounce that, so I used KJ and, to balance it, I added rocker. And used the same username on forums etc., so it became my pseudonym, and that's how everyone knows me. Last year I used my real name Affiliate World Bangkok as a speaker, and the organizers got confused about who this guy is lol.
What kind of offers did you focus on promoting in your first years as an affiliate and what offers are you working with currently?
When I started, I used to promote email-submit offers on the Yahoo answers website, as I mentioned earlier. From there, I started advertising on 7search, a PPC advertising network where I used to promote E-com offers, especially Omaha Steaks. It's funny people used to complain about the traffic quality, Saying their email submit offers were not converting, and at the same traffic source, I was promoting pay-per-sale offers. So, the lesson is, in most cases, The problem is within your offer or funnel, not your traffic or traffic source.
From there, I built a budget for PPV advertising and used it to promote PC security, Lead Generation Offers, and so on.
These days I have my lead generation brands which I am mainly promoting in the Insurance vertical. I do have a few affiliate campaigns from CPA networks too but my bread and butter are my own lead-gen brands now.
What was the biggest day, month, and year you’ve had since starting affiliate marketing in terms of earnings? What were the numbers?
I will be a bit cheeky and say never ask a man about his earnings lol, Honestly as a business if I think about it we have got billion-dollar businesses so my numbers won't be as inspiring, I invest everything my business makes into other projects so the cycle keeps going on.
I must say every day is the biggest Since I started my own lead generation brands because we can easily achieve 3X of what usually offers to pay their affiliates :) But the biggest months when promoting affiliate offers I had were the ones when I used to promote affiliate offers on PPV Advertising networks, Or When I was the top advertiser on all native ad networks a few years ago in Asian geos :)
Let's talk about pre-selecting offers to promote. How do you go about this? And do you work with affiliate networks or direct advertisers?
This is super important. I am super picky about offers. Don't pick everything you see on an affiliate network. Ask your affiliate managers, check with the traffic source ask your affiliate network to give you the offer data.
Usually, I have a list of all affiliate networks and their affiliate managers. So I bulk email them weekly/monthly to send me their top converting offers network-wide and the list of new offers they have on their CPA networks or any exclusive offers. Once they send me a list, I go through all the lists, and my team picks up the good offers that work best with our traffic, and we understand its customer mentality and then request the offer data from the affiliate managers.
I have written about my process in detail here: https://www.kjrocker.com/cpa-marketing/how-to-choose-profitable-cpa-offers/
The most important thing to remember is to always ask for the offer data. See if your affiliate managers can help you with the data because you are the one who will spend his money on testing the offer, and you don't want to do that without basic data. Always ask for it. Also, ask if any private or separate optimized pages exist for different traffic sources.
I myself am a direct advertiser but I still sometimes simply promote a few offers through affiliate networks.
What are your go-to traffic sources for affiliate marketing currently in 2023?
I use Google, Native, and Push mainly. Not a big fan of Facebook because of its low quality and Tiktok is something I couldn't get my head around it yet. Here is why I love the ones I mentioned above.
- Google: It has higher User intent on search traffic. Display and Youtube traffic quality is low, but it is excellent for scaling campaigns and broadening audience reach.
- Native: I have seen fantastic traffic quality and results on Tier one native traffic sources. They are expensive but worth every penny second to only google search traffic quality.
- Push: Dirt-cheap traffic with excellent traffic quality. The only secret is finding good publisher feeds; never let those go once you find them. I have seen excellent results from the push on super competitive verticals.
Have you ever lost a ton of money at once while running ads? If so, tell us how it happened and how much did you burn?
It is part of the game. While running, I have lost up to 5 figures because of technical issues and forgetting things. The most significant loss I had to suffer was in 2020 when I went for a bad partnership and lost almost everything, trusted the wrong people, and learned my lesson.
I always take my losses as an investment into learning something new, Don't sulk. Move on.
Apart from that, what are the other big headaches that you’ve faced while working as an affiliate marketer?
Loneliness, Not having someone around who could understand my work and struggles. Affiliate marketing can be lonely; even though you have your team, you can only share some things with them. Also, when the partnership mentioned above went wrong, I fell into depression, not because of the money but because of the betrayal of my partners. That was a tough one. I couldn't get out of bed, Focus on my work, and later, that caused a domino effect. My work greatly suffered, and that caused many financial issues as well. I used to wake up covered in sweat and stressed.
Thankfully I have an amazing and supportive wife who helped me throughout this journey and helped me get out of this depression and move on with things again.
We see that most affiliates now work in teams but the biggest argument is whether to set up their teams to work fully remotely or in-house (within the same office). What is your take on this with regard to your current business operations?
Every style has its pros and cons. It always depends on your lifestyle and working environment. For example, I love to work from my home office, but I find it hard to work from anywhere but my desk. However, I also don't like other people around the room because that is a distraction and I need peace for my creative thinking, so I prefer a remote team with everyone connected remotely.
Being a boss, your role is of a manager who has to manage his team or its leadership. It depends on how you like to manage your team.
For example, when traveling, I like to manage everything from my phone, but at home, I don't like to use the phone for work.
Everyone has their way of working and their comfort zones. You just need to ensure that whatever you do, your team stays productive, and your working environment doesn't kill your team's creativity.
You create and post a lot of content on your affiliate marketing endeavors on your blog. How has that helped your business?
It helps in every way! Honestly, it always opens new opportunities and doors that I can't even imagine. For example, when I was working from Pakistan, It was tough to get the account approved from Pakistan, but I never had any issues.
When I was in Dubai, I got a chance to work with the World's best PR Agencies because of my blogging, and I got a chance to learn a great deal about marketing from billion-dollar companies.
Also, because of my content, many affiliates, advertisers, and CEOs know me, which always helps to connect with people. As they say, Your Network Is Your Net Worth! You would be surprised how many amazing and life-changing projects people who left affiliate marketing are involved in, and all of that is thanks to the experience they gained from affiliate marketing.
Tell us more about your training programs. What was the motive behind starting it and how many students have you helped so far?
At the start, it was so I could make some extra dollars to fund my advertising campaigns. From there, it kept growing, and I realized it's another excellent way to build a solid network of people who you can trust. My mentorship has produced many super affiliates, and some of them are well-known in the industry. However, I always believed it was their hard work, so I never named anyone or claimed to be the top mentor, etc... For me, it's rewarding enough that they didn't waste my time and did something for themselves and their families.
Also, some are working with Fortune 500 companies like Samsung and LG. Others are investors, Advertisers, CEOs, etc. this always helps to build a powerful and trusted network of people you can rely on.
It is not just for my clients; I also learn from them. When you are mentoring other people, sometimes they share things you would never imagine, so it's always two-way learning and, of course, a great way to build partnerships with people you can trust and count on. For example, if I need more traffic for one of my funnels or brands, I would rather trust one of my consulting clients than an affiliate network because I know exactly how they will promote my brand and what tactics they will use.
If you were to start from scratch as a newbie in the affiliate marketing industry in 2023. What's the ideal roadmap to success that you would take in order to hit a 7-figures milestone?
So if I were to start affiliate marketing from scratch in 2023, I would probably focus on building my own brands. I would use an omni-channel approach, using all online marketing channels to promote my product. Most importantly, I would build a brand and run marketing campaigns around it. My biggest focus would be on having more control over my data, including email marketing, which I can use to maximize my earning potential.
In short, I would have my own lead generation brand, using all traffic sources to build its online presence and grow it. I would leverage traffic sources such as Google, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and more, building it into a brand that generates revenue while running campaigns, and that I can also sell as a brand for the biggest payout. I would collect all customer data and sell that to buyers. This is something I would do if I were starting today.
Let's talk about the future trends of affiliate marketing, especially with the breakthrough of AI tools like ChatGPT and the rest.
Talking about affiliate marketing trends, I think we will see more personalization with the help of AI tools. By analyzing consumer behavior and their data using AI, we will be able to offer more personalized experiences to our audiences and customers. We will find patterns within our audience and deliver targeted recommendations and offers based on the data.
There’s going to be a massive boost from chatbots and voice assistants. AI-powered chatbots and voice assistants will become more powerful and play a massive role in affiliate marketing, especially in recommending offers based on customers' needs and requirements. These tools will be able to answer customer questions, give recommendations, and even complete purchases on behalf of the customers. That's going to be a big one.
Another thing we are going to see is improved fraud detection. AI tools will help us prevent traffic fraud and block bots coming from traffic sources.
We will also see more AI integration from social media platforms. They are going to use AI to deliver more personalized content, so affiliate marketers will be able to leverage this trend by integrating their campaigns with social media platforms and using AI to deliver targeted ads and recommendations to the users.
AI will also help us identify and determine the most effective influencers and advertising platforms that can be leveraged to target and reach our target audiences.
So AI is definitely going to be the biggest trendsetter, and we will see tons of tools and services that will help affiliates to launch campaigns.
What's your motivation to keep on going and keep making moves? Is it all money, or lifestyle?
I drive my motivation from the fact that I create positive experiences for people. My success as a business is directly related to the positive experiences I create for my customers who use my funnels.
I love to make a difference in people's lives, inspiring me to keep moving forward and innovating.
For instance, when working on insurance funnels, I want to make it as easy as possible for my users to be able to apply for life insurance. I would do anything to make that process as smooth as possible. Using the power of AI, Automation I would try my best to make it as simple as possible for the users.
As a Lead gen company, we constantly seek ways to improve our funnels, products and services and create meaningful connections with our customers.
When a customer signs up through one of my lead generation websites and sees all the latest technology is being used to make the process easy for them, that's what drives me.
Also, I would give a massive shoutout to the affiliate community. I would have left the affiliate industry a long time ago, but all the love and respect I get from the industry that's what still keeps me motivated.
Conclusion
KJ Rocker has shared lots of valuable insights into the world of digital marketing, affiliate marketing, and entrepreneurship in this interview. We learned about KJ Rocker's journey in the industry, his expertise in developing successful affiliate campaigns, and his thoughts on the latest trends and innovations in the industry.
We hope you found this interview helpful and informative, and that it provided you with practical tips and advice for your own online business.
If you would like to learn more about KJ Rocker or his work, be sure to visit his website at kjrocker.com, where you can find more information and resources on digital marketing and affiliate marketing.
Thank you again for reading this interview with KJ Rocker to the end. We wish you all the best in your own digital marketing journey!
