Most people stumble into affiliate marketing by accident. Kyle Kostechka proves that sometimes the best discoveries happen when you’re not looking for them.
Picture this: You’re working at a Fortune 500 company, crunching numbers in treasury departments, doing work you enjoy but getting paid peanuts. You’ve just had your fourth kid, and reality hits—you need more money. So you take a job at a company called ClickBank, having no clue what they actually do.
That’s exactly what happened to Kyle. His first week, he thought he’d made the worst career decision ever.
Today, Kyle serves as Senior Business Development Manager at ClickBank and co-hosts the Affiliated Podcast. He calls himself a “business anthropologist,” studying what works, what doesn’t, and why. His unique background gives him a perspective most marketers miss: the ability to see patterns in both human behavior and campaign performance.
Kyle doesn’t just follow trends, he spots them before they hit mainstream. He’s watched spirituality offers explode, seen performance e-commerce reshape the industry, and predicted shifts in traffic sources before most people noticed them happening.
This conversation covers the verticals crushing it right now on ClickBank, which traffic sources actually deliver results (spoiler: it’s not what worked last year), and why your email marketing probably isn’t working anymore. Kyle also shares his predictions for Q3 and Q4, plus his fascinating theory about why AI will work better when people stop typing into it.
Or you can watch it on YouTube here!
Q: Let’s start with your path into affiliate marketing, your journey. How did you get into affiliate marketing, and what do you do at ClickBank?
Kyle Kostechka: So my path isn’t typical by any means. I didn’t think I’d ever end up in marketing originally. I came from an accounting and finance background and used to work with treasury departments at Fortune 500 companies. But ultimately, the job I was working at gave us a lot of cool work, but they did not pay very well. So that was the trade-off. I just had my fourth kid, and I was like, “I need more money.” It just came down to needing a job with better money.
I started working at ClickBank because a friend of mine was employed there, and I had no idea what the company actually did. The first week, I thought I’d made the worst decision ever because, as an accountant, I was like, “I now work for a marketing company. What is this horrid space that I’m in?”
Upon reading Russell Brunson’s DotCom Secrets, I realized that affiliate marketing and direct response marketing, especially when combined with affiliates, are incredibly powerful tools for many individuals. I always felt like it was behavioral economics paired with the accounting and numbers of performance marketing. It felt like, as I describe it, coming home once it made sense, once I knew what it was.
From there, I started as an account manager. I actually worked as director of marketing for one of our top clients for a year, came back, and now I like to say my role is senior business development manager and co-host of the podcast as well, which allows me to talk to so many people. But that’s really my job, just talking to people.
And ultimately, I joke that ClickBank hires me to be a business anthropologist. So I study a lot of businesses, I learn a lot from entrepreneurs, and then I apply what I’ve learned to help other entrepreneurs. I hope to provide similar value to your audience today by extracting insights from other areas in this industry, with the goal of helping them improve.
Q: For an accountant, you are excellent with words. Was going from accounting to marketing a big step for you?
Kyle Kostechka: I was not your typical accountant for sure.
I wasn’t a typical accountant by any means. I had to talk about our troubles a lot as a kid, so loving numbers was more of a secondary thing. I’m pretty sure I would have been a pretty rogue accountant if I were being honest.
So I’m glad I didn’t end up there. I hate taxes far too much to be like, “Let’s push the bounds of gray to keep our money away from them.”
All good things that I didn’t end up there and put somebody in jail for me, being their CPA. So that’s good.
Q: What about the podcast? How did you decide to start it and become a co-host?
Kyle Kostechka: Well, starting the podcast was much easier for me. I didn’t find myself thrown into that. I wanted to be a part of a podcast and start a podcast. The idea came around during the pandemic.
We had changed and hired a content and marketing team, and identified an excellent opportunity to produce content. Initially, we focused solely on interviewing our clients, but Thomas and I soon recognized that we could also discuss other topics.
I’ve always dreamed of doing podcasts. I’ve always wanted to. I study them. I actually love interviewing as a whole. The art of extracting information from people is something that I really love. So that was just super exciting. I remember Robbie Blanchard was our very first interview. I made some mistakes early on with some dumb questions and things like that.
But that was always one that, for us, we knew would be great from a business standpoint as well. It’s a much easier route sometimes when you don’t see how you’re going to do business together, but you know you’re speaking with a very impactful person you’d like to continue to work on that relationship with. Well, let’s give value to our audience and create great content. And a lot of people love being on podcasts, probably for the same reason I like hosting them: they listen to them, and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, it’d be so cool to be on one of these.”
When you’re on one, you’re like, “I’d like to be on more,” because it’s just such a fun thing. So it has been very helpful from a lead gen standpoint as well, which was really the original purpose. How do we get more leads in? However, I believe it has evolved into a passion project that I genuinely enjoy, which involves conducting engaging interviews and providing valuable content.
Most importantly, I recently did an episode with one of our affiliates, Francisco. He was basically in a third-world country, going to university, finding online marketing, and, over the course of the pandemic, completely changing his life. Being able to talk through that mindset and extract some really interesting tidbits that had nothing to do with marketing but everything to do with marketing – everything to do with business in terms of executing on it is cool. So I always really enjoy that.
I think I stepped into my comfort zone when I started doing podcasts. So it was fun 🙂
I don’t know if I’m doing a good job yet, but I would love to feel good enough interviewing somebody to teach somebody else about it. I’m still trying to learn. It’s an underrated art form, so it’s a challenging one for sure.
Q: Podcast is an art. But how do you know to put all those questions in a podcast?
Kyle Kostechka: It is for sure. It is very much an art.
The Hot Ones guy has the best questions. Holy cow, why can’t I think of his name? But they always do such a good job with questions.
And I still think Howard Stern is one of the best interviewers ever because you can see how he interacts with people and conducts interviews. They’d forget they’re being interviewed, which, when you’re a protected celebrity, you’re not supposed to do. And so you get these people to do and say things you would never otherwise hear.
Dan Le Batard’s a really good one. There’s another guy I’m drawing a blank on. Obviously, Larry King in his prime was fantastic. I love studying a good interviewer. They’re always compelling to me.
Q: What verticals or types of offers are currently performing best on ClickBank?
Kyle Kostechka: Health is tricky right now because summer is always weird for that vertical. Think about it: when it’s 80 degrees outside and you’re planning beach trips, are you really thinking about buying health products? Not so much. People have better things to do than worry about their diet.
But here’s what’s interesting: you get these crazy conversion spikes right before summer hits. It’s pure desperation marketing. People suddenly realize, “Oh crap, summer’s in three weeks and I need to lose 20 pounds.” That desperation converts like crazy.
The problem is that CPMs are getting brutal right now. All the big e-commerce brands are ramping up their ad spend for back-to-school and holiday prep. When big companies start throwing around serious ad dollars, it makes life challenging for health officers.
So what’s working on summer? Two things: go lower ticket, and go digital.
I’m seeing massive success with what I call “performance e-commerce.”
Think of those old “As Seen on TV” products, but smarter. You’re not trying to be the cheapest thing on Amazon because broke customers don’t fund your ad spend. And you can’t compete with Apple on premium products. But that sweet spot in the middle? That’s where the money is.
Take security cameras, for example. The quality difference between a $50 camera and a $150 camera isn’t massive, but you can position that $150 one as premium. People feel like they’re getting a deal in this economy, where everyone’s hunting for value.
Now, the verticals that are absolutely crushing it right now are memory and manifestation.
Memory products, especially digital ones like Memory Wave, are performing incredibly well. And manifestation? That’s been my secret weapon recommendation for months.
Here’s the thing about spirituality offers, they work year-round because loneliness doesn’t follow seasonal patterns. Whether it’s abundance, relationships, or just daily horoscopes, people are buying.
The AI revolution has been huge here too. You can now create these incredibly personalized reading experiences that feel like you’ve got Miss Cleo on speed dial.
The best converters in this space are always the pure readings. When someone gets a reading that feels personal and accurate, they’re hooked. And with AI, you can scale that personal touch like never before.
Here’s why I’m bullish on these verticals: the price points are way lower than nutra, but the conversion rates are better. And that makes sense when you look at the economy. Sure, politicians talk about how great things are, but consumer spending numbers tell a different story. People are scared of money right now.
I’ve been telling everyone to focus on value-oriented buyers, and I think that strategy will pay off big through Q4. Health offers will come back strong in Q3 and Q4, but not weight loss, let’s be honest, nobody’s trying to get beach-ready in November. But diabetes management? Blood pressure? That stuff doesn’t take a seasonal break.
Plus, people don’t want packages showing up at their door during the holiday shipping chaos. Digital products solve that problem perfectly. Lower CPMs, high intent, and no shipping headaches. It’s a perfect storm for digital health offers in Q4.
Q: Regarding spirituality, you mentioned that it is a trend throughout the year, applicable to any quarter or season. Is it currently trending?
Kyle Kostechka: I think manifestation and spirituality are great trends anytime, and they are one of the things that I would look for, and that is why I think they will continue to grow. We’ve seen spirituality tied a lot to relationships, often due to a lack of relationships or their breakdown, because it’s just a changing season. I’ve said this on some of our episodes before, but I did a Google search on divorce lawyer trends.
It’s spiking more than it has since like 2009. There’s definitely a real spike going on.
I only say that from a manifestation and spirituality standpoint – I think you’ll actually see an increase of that going into Q3 and Q4 because of what people are experiencing in their relationships. I’d really look into a lot of those spirituality offers, like Soulmate Sketch, for example. It’s a perfect time for an offer like that.
I would say that seasonality-wise, they’re pretty consistent. You don’t necessarily see drop-offs.
They’re going to follow more of the seasonality trends around traffic and traffic prices.
Does spirituality do well in Q1? Yes, but that’s because CPMs are a lot better.
You can drive more traffic on a lower ticket thing. CPMs get more expensive in Q3 and Q4, so sometimes it’s a little more challenging, but they convert so well, they can be pretty consistent.
You just might not have the same cap in terms of the high end and top end that you have with nutra, but you have much higher stability. That’s why I think that vertical is really good.
Q: So basically, any time of the year, these things work because they are related to relationships, and that’s a need people have all year long. Right?
Kyle Kostechka: They do.
The loneliness is not seasonal, but it does sometimes get worse during Q4 and Q1. Definitely Q1.
That is one thing for the relationship side. Q1 can be a really lonely time because you don’t have any holidays.
Like the holidays will feel lonely if you’re alone, but sometimes you have family, and you have pity for others that might still bring you in, even when you’re the loneliest.
But come Q1, no one cares about you. They care more about their taxes than about helping a lonely person. I imagine the loneliness picks up around that time, but for the most part, it’s pretty stable.
Q: What traffic sources work best with ClickBank offers?
Kyle Kostechka: Well, I know YouTube has been challenging lately, especially for nutra. I think aggressive VSLs can be challenging on YouTube right now.
Meta has been the number one traffic source for our offers as it stands currently. I think that’s a great one if you’re newer, a really good place to start.
Meta is probably one of the best places to start, namely because of the cost. You can learn a lot without spending a lot. That’s pretty valuable when you’re starting out.
Almost all the offers on ClickBank have been tested and proven on Meta. It’s a really good traffic source.
It does seem like it’s been doing better than YouTube.
I would say last year, YouTube was the main traffic source, and it’s really flipped to Meta. I’m going to give a shout-out, though, to Native, which I think continues to be just a very, very fantastic traffic source. I strongly recommend that people at least understand and put a sprinkle on Native.
It’s just very, very stable once you figure it out. It’s a lot more predictable than Meta and YouTube. And the scale is actually incredibly large. People assume that it’s small because you have a lot of various networks. It’s not – it’s very, very big. They actually have more impressions and access to eyeballs than Meta does with some of these native publishers. But figuring that process out takes some time.
I’d actually recommend that if you’re interested in native, there’s a man by the name of Tom Woods who is an awesome dude. He did a podcast with us, too. He’s on ClickBank’s platform.
He teaches a lot of people how to do native media buying, and he does an exceptional job at it. That would be kind of the place I’d go to.
The other one is Andrew. Go back and listen to that episode too, because I can’t remember his network, but there are some great tidbits, especially like, where do I start? Which network do I use? Which platform of Native do I use? Because there are a lot of different ones out there. How to understand the compliance between them, how to understand the medium, how to dial in your pre-sell lander, all that stuff. Great content for sure.
Q: That’s good to learn from somebody. What about email? Are people still using email lists?
Kyle Kostechka: Email is not dead by any means, but it is changing drastically.
I think a lot of people are really falling behind on email because of the changes. The biggest thing, I would say that wins in email is customized swipes and creatives.
Everything needs to be very, very custom. You should not, and I would not copy and paste a swipe email and just send it. That used to work. It did. It worked for years. It does not work anymore.
What it will do is get your deliverability in the toilet. They can see this. They have AI implementing these things. They know when an email has been sent out by a bunch of different people and it’s exactly the same. And guess what they do with that email? They don’t let people look at it. You’re going to the promo tab. You’re going in the spam folder, probably not even getting in the inbox at all.
I know the one thing that I have seen – our affiliates that crush email, because one of our top affiliates last year was an emailer – they do customize everything. They’re providing content, they’re changing the swipes, they’re making sure that it fits their audience, and they’re really doing things in a lot more curated way.
I would strongly tell you if you’re going to be doing email, it’s actually a really good time if you’re going to be doing it differently.
Don’t do the standard stuff, learn how to customize at scale, and you could be incredibly successful. If you love email, and this is your time, you want to build an email list, it’s a great time to do it because a lot of the email lists out there aren’t performing well. You could really create a big inroad.
Nate Kennedy builds large email lists and affinity lists using polls. Super interesting stuff. But because he creates this high affinity and then he creates good content that people really want to read, guess what? They open your emails. And when they open your emails, they also open third party seller emails and they trust and believe them and they buy them. He does a great job selling on his newsletters and selling third party promos. But it’s because the content matters most when you’re bringing these people in.
Q: So AI should be a helper, not doing the job for you because that’s just copy-pasting the same thing and people won’t read it, right?
Kyle Kostechka: Exactly, and that connects to something bigger that came up in a CRO group I was in recently. Everyone’s asking: what should we actually use AI for in marketing? What works and what doesn’t?
You nailed it—most people are using AI wrong. They’re trying to replace their work instead of speeding it up. That’s backwards thinking.
Here’s what’s happening: the internet is drowning in AI-generated content. And here’s the thing people don’t realize about ChatGPT and similar tools, they’re basically souped-up predictive text algorithms. Remember when your phone started guessing what you’d type next? That’s the same technology, just scaled up massively.
AI works by predicting what you want based on everything it’s seen before. It’s always shooting for the average, the most likely response. Without human input—that crucial 10% of creativity and personality—everything just gets dragged down to mediocre.
But I’ve seen people absolutely crush it with AI when they use it to accelerate their own thinking. They’re not letting AI do the work; they’re using it to do their work faster and better. That’s where the real opportunity is.
And here’s something most marketers miss: AI isn’t just good at creating content—it’s incredible at engagement.
It’s designed to predict what people want, so why not use that? Instead of thinking “AI customer support,” think “AI sales rep.” Put AI in your customers’ pockets and let it guide conversations toward what you want them to buy.
Now, here’s the game-changer most people are missing: voice interaction.
Peter Kell turned me onto this with his Genius AI platform. Instead of typing into AI, I started talking to it. Complete game-changer. My results got 10x better overnight, and now I use it constantly.
But here’s the mistake everyone’s making: they’re still making customers type into AI tools.
Don’t do that.
Think about it: what’s more popular now than texting? FaceTime. People would rather see someone’s face than type. We’re constantly sending voice messages instead of texts.
When you make people type their thoughts, they get stupid. I’m serious, watching someone try to type out complex thoughts is like watching their IQ drop 50 points in real time. They second-guess everything, overthink simple concepts, and end up frustrated.
But let them talk? AI is brilliant at handling stream-of-consciousness rambling and turning it into something useful.
Here’s the other problem: regular people hate AI. We’re so deep in the marketing world that we think everyone loves all these AI tools. Go talk to someone over 50 about AI and watch their reaction. They think it’s a scam, like NFTs were.
The solution? Don’t call it AI. Call it “expertise in your pocket” or “instant answers.” Lead with the benefit, not the technology.
I’ve got this product idea that would absolutely kill it: imagine an app for couples who can’t decide where to eat dinner. You know that conversation—nobody wants to decide, everyone’s frustrated, and you end up at the same place you always go.
Instead, you hit one button, start talking: “We’re thinking Italian, but she wants something healthy, and we don’t want to spend more than $50…” Just stream-of-consciousness rambling. The AI processes it all and gives you three perfect restaurant recommendations with a little explanation showing it actually listened.
People would be blown away. Finally, something that actually helps instead of making them work harder.
And here’s the affiliate angle: you get tons of data about people’s preferences, you can partner with restaurants for referral fees, and you can recommend food products they might want to try at home. The monetization opportunities are endless.
The key is making AI feel helpful, not complicated. Voice interaction, real solutions to real problems, and smart monetization on the backend. That’s the future of AI in marketing.
Q: What about the model used at ClickBank? CPA, CPL, or others?
Kyle Kostechka: ClickBank historically has been rev share for a long, long, long time. But we are also digital, so that really worked in that world. But CPA is massive.
I would argue it’s a bigger form of traffic than rev share is. I think it’s probably five years ago, maybe more, maybe less. I can’t even remember now. But we then implemented CPA. So CPA is our largest.
I’d say most of our traffic runs through rev share actually. We have a substantial portion of CPA.
For those who don’t know CPA, that’s cost per action, really cost per acquisition.
When you get a sale, it’s a flat amount. And then you don’t have to worry about refunds or chargebacks, which in rev share you do.
Those are two models that we provide.
We don’t do any CPL or I’d say we have to be involved with the sale because ClickBank actually processes that. That’s where we kind of drop off in CPL.
For those that aren’t familiar with ClickBank, one of the reasons why I’m going to take a moment and say our CPA network, and I’ll circle back to RevShare too, is really, really powerful, is it’s not a CPA network where you’re operating off, sometimes CPA networks don’t process the transactions.
You have a real black box of reporting. And that’s scary if you’re driving a lot of traffic. How do I know that I’m not getting skimmed? How do I know that people are really paying me what I’m actually earning? How do I know what my actual CPA is? Because realistically, they probably negotiated a different amount.
And I don’t know if my data is good. And you might be on net 30 terms, so you have to wait every month just to get paid out on your CPA, which could really slow things up and be a real challenge, especially when you’re new and starting out.
For us on our CPA, it is completely transparent. We don’t do escrow for our affiliates or for our offer owners.
They’re not having to float anything. The reporting is instantaneous. As soon as you get a sale, you know what the sale is and you know how much you made off of it. We pay out for our top affiliates as fast as three times a week.
And for most everybody, you can get at least twice weekly if you have a contact, you can reach out for those things. But even Net7 for just the average person. A lot faster than you’re getting from many, many CPA networks. And you don’t have to be the top seller to negotiate better terms. You can actually still be an average seller and get Net7. That’s already four times better than Net30.
There are really some great options with our CPA, and there’s no skimming. It’s fully transparent. You see everything; you get the sale as soon as you earn it. And then it’s just as soon as we pay you out is essentially what comes next.
The CPA model on our platform has gained significant popularity. And I’d say for anyone wanting to try CPA, or if you’ve done it and you’re kind of sick of the networks, ClickBank would be an amazing place to try.
Conclusion
Kyle’s path from Fortune 500 number-cruncher to affiliate marketing strategist shows how outsider perspectives can spot opportunities others miss. His accountant’s brain combined with genuine curiosity about human behavior creates insights most marketers never see.
Here’s what stands out from our conversation: People are becoming more careful with their money, which means lower-ticket digital offers are winning right now. Email marketing still works, but only if you ditch the copy-paste swipe files that everyone else uses. And spirituality offers? They’re not going anywhere—loneliness doesn’t follow seasonal patterns.
Kyle’s take on AI hits different too. Instead of seeing it as a replacement for creativity, he views it as a creativity accelerator. His prediction about voice-based AI interactions makes sense when you think about it—most people hate typing their thoughts but love talking them out.
Looking toward Q3 and Q4, Kyle’s advice boils down to this: understand where your audience’s head is financially, test e-commerce performance if you haven’t already, and don’t sleep on digital health products when weight loss season ends.
We have only begun to explore this topic. Part 2 of our interview with Champions of Performance Marketing digs into Kyle’s advanced strategies, specific case studies that worked (and bombed), and his predictions for where affiliate marketing is headed next.
Part 2 drops soon with more actionable strategies from Kyle Kostechka. In this part, you will see his unfiltered thoughts on scaling affiliate campaigns.
Listen to the full episode:
Author: Julia Draghici
Julia is the CEO of CPV Lab and CPV One ad trackers. She has 15+ years experience in the software industry, from development to management. For more than 6 years she is helping marketers get the best out of their marketing campaigns by using a performant ad tracker. Passionate about entrepreneurship, business and performance marketing, Julia loves helping people!
