I have decided to trial a new feature here at Kinky Afro. A featured called Unsung Heroes of Affiliate Marketing. The aim is to feature people that are involved in Affiliate Marketing, people who are vital to the day to day running of a successful affiliate programme. Some of these people you may know, some you may not but each of them has a unique role in the industry we all work in.

I hope you find these posts useful and if you would like to be featured in this series then please feel free to get in touch here.

First on the list is Ken Cheung from Blue Barracuda. Ken is a great guy and extremely approachable. You can read his interview below.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Ken, affiliate manager at Blue Barracuda, I essentially oversee all of our clients with anything to do with affiliate, comparison and affinity relationships, I also oversee the campaigns we run, as an affiliate on Findanyfilm.com (http://www.findanyfilm.com), our affiliate site. I also run a few of my own sites including customminifig.co.uk (http://www.customminifig.co.uk), 40kimperialguard.co.uk (http://www.40kimperialguard.co.uk) and Freebie Town (http://www.freebietown.co.uk)

I got into affiliate marketing just after uni and have been doing it ever since. Working network, agency and affiliate side, the only thing I’m missing is merchant side experience, which I’ve kind of touched on with one of my sites. I genuinely believe you need to see the whole picture to be any good as an affiliate manager. Being an affiliate manager isn’t as simple as approving affiliates and checking for fraud.

What is your day to day role?

The great thing about affiliate marketing is each day is different, sure I’ve got my usual tasks such as approving affiliates managing newsletters and codes, but the really juicy stuff is with all the planning, negotiating and analysis, which we do a lot of. We plan for clients yearly, quarterly and monthly, we also send our clients reports with full analysis on a weekly monthly and yearly basis, its only with this level of clarity and depth of analysis that we can really help grow our clients campaigns and make a difference to their bottomline. After work I usually spend a few hours on my own sites, its here that I really get to relax, but also learn about new techniques and understand more fully what strategies affiliates are taking to market affiliate programs. Affiliate marketing moves so quickly you really need to be an affiliate to be able to understand what affiliates are doing and how they are doing it.

What was your previous job and was it related to affiliate marketing?

My previous job was at another agency where I was part of the team that setup the affiliate management proposition and setup their network. In 2008/09 affiliate marketing was the Buzz word it seemed that every agency wanted an affiliate department, regardless of if they had the infrastructure to support it.

What do you love about affiliate marketing?

From an agency side, its innovative and fun, I get to meet some of the most entrepreneurial people and be at the forefront of what’s happening online. As a general rule because affiliates use all sorts of different strategies such as PPC, SEO and Display, you end up getting a very broad idea about how each of these media channels work, which obviously helps you in an agency where all these channels are separate. Affiliate is also all about making sales, and so you end up being very aware of your clients financial needs and requirements, which in turn helps you from a finance perspective. To put it simply, working in affiliates gives you the best skill set compared with other channels and industries, because the rules haven’t been set and there’s still room for growth, it’s a real opportunity to make your mark.

As an affiliate I love the fact that after a day in the office I go home check my stats to find I’ve made a massive sale that’s paid for all my sites and hosting. It’s a great feeling when you’ve been out with friends and you come home to find you’ve actually earned more than your beer money in the same time. Obviously, like any other affiliate, the dream is to have a long term income that doesn’t really take too much to maintain.

What do you hate about affiliate marketing and what would you change if you could?

I have to admit there are things a that really annoy me about affiliate marketing, Hackers and fraudsters being the main thing, there needs to be more done to stop this kind of behaviour online, let along within affiliate marketing. Other things such as Brand name bidding, cookie ‘napping/dropping’ really irk me, but that’s really part of the game, lastly clients don’t always ‘get’ affiliate marketing, and I don’t think there’s enough education about this. Overall, however affiliate marketing isn’t all that bad.

List your top 5 resources that help you with your day to day job?

Google for sure, and some of the tools google provide, Hitwise and comscore are awesome, as is the affiliates4u forum. I try and read all the affiliate blogs especially Genos, and if I can get my hands on it I’ll real Igaming news (casino affiliate stuff) and revenue magazine (generic affiliate stuff), the BBC and the economist really come in handy as well. To be honest I don’t have a set of tools, but anything that gives me the information I’m looking for quickly and accurately ticks the box.

If you were an affiliate how would you help someone in your role?

As an affiliate I tend to try and actually speak with the affiliate manager, more can get done in a phone call or a  meeting than over a series of emails, I’ve actually had to deal with this as an affiliate manager and we’ve seen some good response from affiliates, affiliates need to be more predictable and make us (affiliate managers) aware of what they are doing, when they are doing it and for how long, affiliates often expect creative (as an example) done instantly, when the reality is for some of our clients this could be 2/3 months before a graphic designer is scheduled in to do the work, if we as an agency know before hand, we’re in a far better position to allocate resource, prep the client and plan accordingly.

In your opinion what is the future of affiliate marketing and how can affiliates take advantage of this?

Controversial as it sounds I think sooner or later affiliate marketing will take over Display and the main ‘content’ based online marketing format, but this could be years away. For 2010, I think discount codes will still be big, but more things will happen to control this space, attribution and innovative commission structures will develop and I think datafeeds/ comparison will be a big thing for 2010. I think we’ll also see more affiliate merging different type of sites together, eg. Voucher codes merged with price comparison, we’re already seeing some of this with Kelkoo. I think PPC as an affiliate will get really difficult as less brand bidding is allow and less direct linking is permitted and this area of the industry will eventually get absorbed into agency in-house PPC teams.

What is on your Ipod?

Hahaha, this is tragic, I’ve got Wreckless Eric playing as well as a load of classical stuff and dance music, eclectic to say the least, but all music that I can just work for hours to.

How can people get in touch with you?

You can reach me on k0106765<at>yahoo<dot>co<dot>uk for affiliate stuff, ken@bluebarracuda.com for affiliate management stuff and on my phone – 07809572028

Thanks Ken