Can you give us a little background information on yourself Michael, where do you live?

I live in Lake Mary, FL, which is just outside of Orlando.

And how old are you?

I'm 34 years old.

What motivates you?

I'm very motivated by affiliate marketing and performance based marketing, which is the culprit behind affiliate marketing.  I’m also extremely motivated by making MarketLeverage the best company in the industry; and entire team here that I'm so fortunate to work with everyday. 

We're always interested in making MarketLeverage more successful and serving our customers better than we do today. 

What inspires you?

I think the concept of greatness is enormously inspiring.  I remember first reading about Thomas Jefferson and some of our other American founders. I've always been so moved and amazed by what they were capable of creating and what it’s lead to. Greatness is all over the place, it’s all over the world.

When I see people really striving to accomplish something outside of their comfort zone, I find that to be inspiring.  I think it’s very important that we always try to be better that we were yesterday.  
And one day at a time, I think that’s very inspiring.

You’re best know as the founder and CEO of PrecisionPlay Media, the parent company of Performance Advertising Network MarketLeverage .  Tell us how you got started, and when did you start?

I got started in the business about nine years ago.  A good friend of mine at a sales job was lucky enough to have a brother-in-law who started a company out in California and he was really steeped in the whole internet advertising business, almost from the start.  He thought of me and he called me up.

He actually moved back to Florida and I worked for him out of his house for a pretty popular internet company at the time.  That’s basically how I learned the business.

Did you ever imagine it would be come as successful a business as it has?

When I started the company, it was really just me and a computer at first.  When I understood the power of performance marketing and the affiliate model, and what happens when both of those come together, I pretty much believed that this was going to be a multi-billion dollar industry. 

I knew that I was lucky enough to get started in the beginning of it.  So the truth of the matter is, I've expected it to get as big as it is, and I expect it to get a lot bigger.

What were your original goals for MarketLeverage.com ?

I started and still own a company called PrecisionPlay Media.  PrecisionPlay is more of an online advertising agency and media buying company. 

When we started MarketLeverage, essentially we automated a lot of what media buying was to PrecisionPlay Media.  PrecisionPlay Media would have a group customers and a group of publishers; we would make phone calls, handle legal agreements, build creative, and manage the technology to get those two parties to work together. 

When it became clear to us that there were platforms out there that would allow us to automate that process, which is what affiliate marketing networks do, we realized that we needed to get involved in that. That is our principal reason for starting MarketLeverage.

MarketLeverage has now grown to become one of the web’s largest cost per acquisition, or CPA networks. Can you highlight anything in particular, such as a policy or approach, that led to this happening?

Our customer is number one and I know that is so cliché, but it is really the truth and the reason that we've been able to grow as much as we have over the last few years.

We have dedicated affiliate managers that work with each publisher, and a number of advertising managers that do the same.  We try to create this one-on-one perspective. 

We've innovated a lot of things like the internet’s first affiliate marketing TV show, MLTV.  We have a new episode once a week, and we’ve started to notice it catching on in other places.  That is primarily a way for us to be known personally by people out there on the internet. 

Being very personable, reaching out to people and placing our customer's interests first are the primary drivers of why MarketLeverage has been able to grow the way that it has and will continue to.

There are plenty of CPA websites, what makes your stand out and get such a large following so fast?

Again, I think it really does come back to the fact that we’ve got great people. We go to a trade show, for example, and attendees know the people at MarketLeverage. They say "oh wow, there's Mike Kelly or there's Dina," and they feel like they know who these people are because they have seen us on MLTV, they've gotten video e-cards from us and they seen their presence on the website.  I think that is a big part of it.

Beyond just being personable, it also implies a certain level of trust.  When I was an affiliate, which I was from the very beginning, even until today, I learned very quickly that this is still the wild west. There are a lot of people, unfortunately, that don’t pay.  So we decided early on that it was extremely important for us to make sure that all of our publishers not only got paid, but also got paid the highest payouts, and got paid on time.  
We are the only affiliate marketing network in the industry that I'm aware of that pays all of our publishers by FedEx.  We do that because we know how important receiving those payments on time is. We have the best paying referral program in the industry, and a wonderful rewards program as well. 

It’s a priority for us to give the benefits back to the publishers and as a result of that we've grown organically, and they've referred a lot of people to us.

Tell us a little about MarketLeverage and MLTV .  People are very impressed with the idea- Michael from Retire at 21 loves the top offer feature in the video.  How is MLTV going?

MLTV is going great.  We're very, very happy and just recently celebrated our first year of MLTV.  We've probably done now about 55 episodes now. 

We just built a custom studio in our office, and we're beginning to add some new features to MLTV, which I haven't seen anywhere else online.  The new version of MLTV is really neat, because it’s clickable. For example, you can roll your mouse over it and you can click on Dina and that will send an email to her.  You can click on the various offers that we have, and if you’re logged into MarketLeverage, you'll automatically go that offer.  
We're starting to integrate clickable video into MLTV in a way that makes it very efficient for our publishers; that’s really exciting. 

There's also a group of books that I read every morning by Peter Drucker, who is a business philosopher.  He came up with the concept of the knowledge worker, which changed the way that we dealt with our employees. That’s been very successful for us.

What is the best advice you've ever been given?

My father has used a lot of different aphorisms that I've grown up with and served me fairly well.  
One of things I always say about affiliate marketing and performance marketing is “he who has the gold makes the rules.” This is really the case with what the CPA industry does. 

The advertiser is the person with the gold. At the end of the day, they are the ones that get to make the rules. They get to define what it is that they want to pay for and mitigate their risk by doing so. 

CPA is the advent of a brand new way of marketing. It’s extremely efficient for the person with the gold, so we believe that that’s the driving force behind this industry. That little saying has really influenced the way that we think about the business.

What advice would you give to a young entrepreneur setting up their first business?

It’s enormously exciting, but you have to pay attention to the bottom line at all times. Every dollar is an opportunity to invest; it can give you a greater return. 

It’s important to know your customer, too.  

I’ve been an affiliate.  I know what it’s like to not get paid.  I know what it’s like to swap-out a lot of different offers.  Our company knows what the metrics look like when something’s working and when it’s not. We understand the needs of affiliates and its made us better in serving them. 

To sum it up, be very conservative; know what the marketplace is; and really know who your customer is and serve them.

If the internet had not existed, what do you think you’d be doing?

I’m glad the internet does exist, because I have no idea what I’d be doing. I’m so happy with what the internet, and this industry in particular do. It’s so revolutionary – that’s exciting.

What do you like best about the internet?

There’s a sense every day when I come to work that the best is still ahead.  The internet is constantly changing and optimizing. New opportunities are available regularly on the internet, and I find that to be so thrilling. 

I know that if we just continue to focus and take advantage of all of the new innovations that come to the internet and put them into MarketLeverage, we’ll be better at serving our customers.
The great thing about the internet is that it’s constantly open to new innovations, which gives people the ability to fold them into their business.

What do you like least about the internet?

The internet tends to be a haven for people who don’t want to be known and don’t want to be transparent.  There are literally millions of people with computers that are trying to manipulate some of those great systems like affiliate marketing.

I would like to see more accountability and more responsibility come online but until that happens, I think the opportunities far outweigh the downside.

Have you any personal or business plans that you can share with us about your future plans or lifetime goals?

The growth of MarketLeverage is one of the primary goals for me.

I’m also excited about the future of social media and video.  There are opportunities to combine both of these things. 

Email marketing is also a really interesting medium.  It’s a great direct response medium that allows the marketer to get a lot of customer feedback and to implement relevancy in the message- I don’t think that’s being done very much.

It’s going to be really interesting to see what Google does and what a lot of other people do, because that’s going to change our business.

 As far as personal goals, we just want to provide the best service we can to as many people as we can... and continue to grow the company.

Thanks very much Michael for the interview, to find out more about Market Leverage , click here.