CEO of PointClickTrack - Ken

[Misharuski]

Welcome to E-Millionaire Interviews

Lets welcome Ken to eMillion Forum. He is the CEO of PointClickTrack, and has been in the industry for over 7 years.




1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How old are you? Where do you live?

Well I'm 31 years young and I live in a little town called Middlebury here in Indiana. We are about 10-15 minutes from the popular Amish town Shipshewana which allows us to experience the Amish culture on a daily basis.... nothing like coming into work waiting behind a horse and buggyhaha.


2. How long have you been working in this industry and how did you get involved?

I first was introduced to this industry in 2005 back when some of the incentive sites were starting to gain some steam. There was a certain point in my life where my wife was put on strict bed rest when pregnant with our child and she could no longer work. On a whim after being a "customer" to a good number of the early incentive sites on the web I felt with my background with computers and designing websites on the side with a buddy of mine that I could make a "Freebie Site" better than most of the ones that were out there. So I took what I knew, and worked with an online programmer that I befriended and we started to work on our own custom freebie script which later became the Git-R-Free Network, kind of a play off the popular comedian Larry the Cable Guy who has the coined phrase of "Git-R-Done." But anyways, I had a strong following from a few online forums that I had established a good reputation on by helping people with questions so after launching my own group of incentive sites, it actually took off much faster than I ever expected. I mean my goal was to supplement my wife's $500 income and in our first month we did over $30,000k in Revenue. It was a real eye opener and I was pretty much hooked from there on in the industry.


3. Please tell us how you got started with PointClickTrack and what you guys do?

Well after working in the incentive portion of this industry for a few years I had established a lot of great relationships with advertisers and networks both, I utilized my established relationships to secure deals to help my next creation which was the PointClickTrack CPA Network. This too was something my programmer friend and I had worked out together and created our own Affiliate network from the ground up. It was great being able to take everything I learned as an affiliate in this space and create what I feel is the ultimate tracking platform that I truly believe in and I know and understand from the inside out. With having our own platform we strive to develop and create fresh and custom tools and try to focus on ease of use as well for our script and anything we release. Our Affiliate Managers work with the publishers closely and try to help get them whatever offers they need so they can monetize their traffic and generate some money for themselves.


4. If people have more questions about PointClickTrack can they contact you Ken?

Yes,but just to be honest I get a lot of emails and phone calls that come through and I don't want to try to mislead anyone by saying sure call or email me anytime I’m always available. But yes you can obviously contact me. The absolute best email to use would be info@pointclicktrack.com as it is checked multiple times a day. If you are more of a phone person then just leave me a message @ 1-574-821-4036


5. What is the networks future expansion ideas?

We have a few things underway right now and are anxious to release them, we recently did a face lift to PointClickTrack and have been focusing on branding and on the development side I have a few projects I’m excited about that we are working on but at this time I cannot release any details on them.


6. What are your favorite traffic sources? What niche has worked best for you?

Coming from the incentive side of the industry this is the side I’ve worked with and understand the most as well it's what I’ve spent the most time working with. It's been a very interesting area to create tools, and scripts to help it along and try to get the "good" traffic out of it. There are many legitimate ways to work incentive traffic where it can work out for all parties, unfortunately there a lot of bad eggs out there that have nothing but malicious intent... but we have a few things in store for them folks as well. Outside of incentive traffic, I've found some success in the daily deal niche and some in gaming offers and just find it just fun and interesting coming up with landing pages and banners that alter the performance of a campaign on media buys.


7. What was your biggest success to date?

I've had various success stories to-date, but I honestly feel my biggest success was the creation and launch of both Git-R-Free and PointClickTrack, I am just very proud of what we as a company have created and the fact that it was something that was originally done on a whim, and now employs people and allows them to live a honest life with medical benefits as well as helping some just make ends meet with contract labor jobs. I am a Christian man and feel very blessed with a great team of people working for me who I can truly say put in a full day’s work and then some who also have the mindset of doing what's right for the company and the customer. This may not be your typical success story but to me it has been. We strive every day to keep growing and treating everyone respectfully and honestly.


8. If you could give one tip to the newcomers starting out in this vast growing industry what would it be?

Don't beat around the bush about your intentions, really look at yourself and find something that you are passionate about and run with it. You will be able to find the customers in that niche and know what to target and what to test if you are someone who likes those same things and are passionate about it. Everything takes time... and testing, but just keep trying and eventually you will get it.

9. Let’s say someone wants to get into Media Buying, how can they get started?

There is a lot of places on the web where you can bid for media placements, but if you can take the time to find the sites out there (which there are thousands+) that are not already monetizing there sites, or are but in lesser ways of what you know try to hit up the site owner and work out a deal with them, whether it's a banner ad placement, or text links, or interstitial ad (not on first visits), as long as it's not intrusive to the websites traffic and can convert with the demographics the site is getting you can see some good success without much if any competition that you see in many of the typical media buying self-serve systems out there.


10. What are your goals for 2012?

To release a few new solutions to problems that we are aware of in the industry and continue to grow and strengthen everything we already currently do.


11. Give us a little glimpse into what a typical day in your life looks like.

Currently I wake up around 6am or so try to fit in a Bible study or devotional if I can sometimes eating breakfast with my kids, many times I find myself skipping breakfast then it's off to the office, which is not far from home do a bit of touching base with the staff as we start our day around 7:50 - 8am. I proceed to going through emails that came through, working out deals, and setting up offers and growing relationships most the time over AIM.. I'm a bit of a Instant Messenger person more-so than anything else. I typically check up on ROIs of some of the things I’m doing myself and do a quick check on some of the industry related blogs. I touch base with our programmer to see where he is at on all the projects I have him working on and give feedback and additional requests there all while answering any questions & concerns that come up throughout the day with everyone else working at PointClick. The office gets a little quieter around 4pm or so and I try to get as much of my to-do list tackled. Typically try to head home by 5:30 to eat dinner with my wife and Kids around 6. Not every day but more often than not, I find myself going through emails etc. later in the evening after the kids are in bed, and working some pretty long nights from time to time depending on the day. :) I'm a pretty laid back humble person or at least try to be, and I love being able to spend time with my family but also love my job and the business so basically I do whatever needs to be done to fit all that into my daily schedule.


12. Thanks Ken, if there is anything else you would like to say to the members of the eMillion community now is the time!

It was a pleasure, this community is vastly growing and I wish you the best of luck.

[sabhansali]

Wow nice, thanks for posting this!

[BigBoldBrave]

Hey Ken :)

~BigBoldBrave

[Doomster]

very inspiring indeed