Author Archives: Andrew Wee

About Andrew Wee

My name is Andrew Wee. I'm 32 years old, live in Singapore and am happily married with a 2 month old daughter. I've gone through a list of various occupations including: * journalist (for a business newspaper) * Internet content developer (for one of Asia's largest media group's Singapore Press Holdings) * trainer in entrepreneurship, business building, life skills * photographer/photojournalist * real estate agent * consultant * entrepreneur (I think that's enough for now...more later!) This is a personal space to express my goals, dreams and aspirations.

Affiliate Summit West 2009 In Pics and Words (Part 2)

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If you missed it, check out: Affiliate Summit West 2009 in Pics and Words (Part 1).

Here’s more goodness from the Affiliate Summit:

carolyn tang

ShareASale’s Director of Client Services Carolyn Tang AKA Catango is one of the most pleasant and knowledgeable individuals in the industry and it was a pleasure to talk to her at the SaS booth, even though there were lots of people there.

As a tradeshow visitor, I’ve got more than my fair share of t-shirts, notepads, pens, paper weights and stationery to last 2.5 lifetimes. I liked how SaS did a little out of the box thinking to provide a photobooth where affiliates took some crazy pics (I’ll post mine later), and thoughtfully gave out baby T-shirts and bears. For affiliates with families or significant others, they’ll likely be seeing the SaS logo on a teddy bear or baby T for some time to come. (a good thing).

Check out the Friday Podcast interview on Affiliate Program Strategies with Carolyn Tang.

colin mcdougall ros gardner

It was cool hanging out with top affiliates Colin “Google” McDougall and Ros Gardner over dinner at the Nobu Japanese restaurant at the Hard Rock for the private launch of Jim Lillig’s Offeratti network.

Considering that Colin doesn’t take raw food, it’s a testament to the great food at Nobu that Colin was enjoying the sashimi with the rest of us during the meal. It was also interesting to hear Colin tell his stories about his towed trailer that he rolls out for holidays. And if you’re looking for inspiration as you’re working towards your ideal affiliate lifestyle, Ros has bought a lot of nice toys/trinkets to enjoy the fruits of her labor.

dina riccobono

It was great to meet affiliate network Market Leverage‘s marketing manager Dina Riccobono after talking to her over IM and being interviewed for MLTV late last year.

Market Leverage has a proactive outreach and affiliate recruitment program and it’s refreshing to see a network take the intiative in getting to know affiliates. They hosted a dinner at Switch at the Encore hotel, with Market Leverage CEO Mike Jenkins in attendance. It was a great opportunity to talk to affiliate managers Mike Kelly and Jen Fluker to get insight into how affiliate managers operate.

At the dinner, Mike announced the launch of Market Leverage’s greenlinks program, which provides links to video-based affiliate training from the ML website interface.

Here’s an earlier Friday Podcast with Market Leverage CEO Mike Jenkins

jen goode

Jen Goode, better known as JGoode, headed the Affiliate Summit mentors program and did a great job (I believe there were more than 100 mentees in the program). I also had a picture taken with the penguin and nearly kidnapped him. Ah well, maybe next time.

In the meantime, check out the Friday Podcast with Jen talking about Print-On-Demand product strategies

jon fisher

With Jon Fisher AKA AOJon , founder of the WickedFire affiliate marketing forum. I started making these “gang signs” because a number of the “affiliate gangstas” started making them.

miles baker geordie carswell nickycakes

Before the panel discussion on Affiliate Strategies for Traffic Generation and Sales Conversion on the first day of the summit with Miles Baker, Geordie Carswell, Nickycakes.

The session went well with positive Continue reading →

Friday Podcast: Print-On-Demand Business Strategies With JGoode

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I met Jen Goode better known as JGoode at the recent Affiliate Summit where she was helming the mentors program.

Jen is one of the nicest people you will meet in internet marketing and she’s gone out of her way to help people.

As a designer and a programmer, Jen has a unique set of skills which gives her an advantage when it comes to marketing her fine art and t-shirt designs.

Her move to print-on-demand (POD) services to develop her own products such as t-shirts is a great primer for aspiring marketers looking at the POD market.

During the Friday Podcast, we talked about:

Jen’s background and how she got started on the Internet
How she developed her skills in both the design element of internet marketing and programming
The benefits of print-on-demand services
How to get started on POD services
How to determine which products sell and how to generate traffic and sales for your products
Tips for establishing your niche within the POD marketplace
How to use customer follow up strategies to increase your sales and profits

New and experienced marketers will get something out of the podcast accessible below:

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Links:

Anatomy Of A Viral Video

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What’s not to like about viral videos?

They attract tons of traffic.

Aside from minor content creation/editing costs, the production cost is minimal.

Video is getting hot.

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On the negative side:

Video viewers tend to be click happy and might click on the next “related video” before finishing yours.

They might not be motivated to head to an external link/website to take action.

Even if they do click on the link, they might not be qualified to participate in the CPA or affiliate offer.

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When video marketing is done right, however, it can get you more bang for your buck, compared to any other PPC or SEO/SEM campaign. National coverage, including appearances on shows like Conan, Ellen, Oprah could be in the cards.

Witness the video which made its appearance early last year Sammy Stephen’s minimall rap:

Here is the original version with about 3.8 million plays:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ3oHpup-pk[/youtube]

Some elements which made this a success:

A catchy electrosynth drum machine background track
An interesting host/performer (check out Sammy’s bug-eyed look)
Kitschy elements (whether you find it funny/humorous or just so plain bad that it’s good)

What I think works in its favor is the Sammy’s personality and the fact that he’s having fun with it.

As is apparent in his appearance on Fox 6 WBRC:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbmVVOHa5BI[/youtube]

Now after watching that, aren’t you a little curious to check out his mini-mall?

Else Simon might have something to say about that:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3Uux__e5aw&NR=1[/youtube]

It’s difficult to predict what the impact of a single video will be. However, there’re lots of examples to take a leaf out of and test.

Making The Most Out Of Social Media

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At last month’s Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas, I took a question asking “How do I effectively use social media in my business?”

Here is the long answer:

Social media (I would consider this as “blogging and the other stuff that goes with it”) is more than just a tool in my business. Up till now, it is the foundation of my business.

If HTML websites are billboards filled with information waiting for people to stumble upon them and read them, then blogs are like aggressive ticket scalpers running up to you and shouting in-your-face, in a direct manner. (this is a good thing).

And if you’re new to the social traffic, social networking game, here are some pointers:

Go out and try everything: The best and worst part of social marketing is that it’s usually free to sign up and participate in. (Although if you forget to factor in the value of your time invested, you could be losing out in a great deal of opportunity cost). Heard about LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Plurk, FriendFeed, Friendster, Orkut, Plurk, Hi5, Flickr, Craigslist, YouTube, Twitter? Why not sign up for an account. If you’re concerned about it (and you probably should be), make sure you register your personal name, your business, your brand, and get your related domain or account name before someone else does. Sure, you can go after “social network domain/account name squatters” after the fact, but it’s going to take time and resources to do that, so why not spare yourself the trouble now.
Learn to specialize: I don’t think it’s worth being a “jack-of-all-trades” and spread yourself across all the social networks and have merely superficial relationships with the people in those communities. Instead, I’d suggest focusing on specializing in one or two social networks and “embedding” yourself in them. Learn the social rituals, get to know the influencers, build YOUR own social influence within those circles. Some wannabe “gurus” would have you believe that your social influence is dictated by the number of followers or friends you have. In my opinion, that is utter nonsense and is at best a simpleton’s scare tactic. Just like wine, it’s quality than counts, not quantity.
Stay away from the Dark Side: Yes, the medium is a free one, but does that mean you should keep taking away from it (see: How NOT to be a tool on Twitter and How NOT to be a tool on Twitter part 2)? Believe or not, there’s a better course of action, that’s to build your goodwill bank.

Being “successful” with your social marketing efforts has a lot to do with your social influence and ability to shape opinions and behavior. And that’s going to take more than just a simple follower count to resolve.

how not to be a tool on twitter

Friday Podcast: Social Marketing Strategies With PotPieGirl

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This week on the Friday Podcast, I invited PotPieGirl to talking about generating traffic using free methods.

I’d seen her twitter exchanges with Miles Baker and found that she’s pretty proficient in building sites on Squidoo (the social networking site founded by marketer and author Seth Godin) and generate affiliate marketing income from her efforts.

During the course of our discussion, I found out:

How she got started in affiliate marketing
Her strategy for traffic generation and how she got involved in social media marketing
How she balances her time with a spouse and kids to take care of too
How 2007’s “Squidoo Slap” (where Google placed less prominence on Squidoo lenses) has affected her business
Tips for resources to build your internet marketing skills
How to market effectively using Squidoo lenses

Check out the podcast below: