Category Archives: affiliate marketing

Are You Tough Enough For Affiliate Summit West 2009?

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Affiliate Summit co-founders Shawn Collins and Missy Ward present innovative events in conjunction with their signature Affiliate Summit events. They organized an affiliate road rally when I was in Las Vegas earlier this year, with about 20 affiliates and networks taking part. It was truly radio control mayhem as our radio signals crossed and cars, trucks and other vehicles careened into the human drivers and into the wall.

This time round, the next Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas will feature an Affiliate Triathlon, billed as “designed for affiliate marketers by affiliate marketers”. As affiliate marketing gives most successful affiliates the option to eat and sleep as much as they can comfortably tolerate, the tendency is to put on a little weight around the waist, thighs, face, etc. (With the exception of a couple of notables like Shawn, Missy, Heather Paulson, Ros Gardner, Amit Mehta, Chad Frederiksen, John Hasson, Nickycakes – who are the healthier minority among the affiliate majority).

All proceeds from the event go to charity, which will include the National Breast Cancer Foundation. It’ll be a fun event for sure, though I’m hoping Shawn will give more details. Maybe this year, we’ll see Heather in her bikini at the Rio pool taking on all challengers?

Shawn Collins

Shawn Collins on his preferred mode of transport

Affiliate Summit West 2009 will be from Jan 11-13 in Las Vegas at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.

Get your tickets early to avoid disappointment.

Tip: Use promo code ASW09WHOISAW to save 10% off any type of pass

Affiliate Blogger Panel At Affiliate Summit West 2009

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Nickycakes had a headstart in making this announcement.

The speakers for the workshop element of the Affiliate Summit have been selected, and I’ll be moderating a session “Affiliate Bloggers Speak Out: Tips on SEO, PPC and Sales Conversion” at the upcoming Affiliate Summit which is from Jan 11-13 in Las Vegas next year.

Together with me for the session will be the panelists:

nickycakes geordie carswell miles baker

Affiliate Bloggers Speak Out Panelists: (Left to Right)Nickycakes, Geordie Carswell, Miles Baker

This’ll be a great session not only because the three panels are highly skilled affiliate marketers, but they have very different strengths too. Although Nickycakes and Geordie (former affiliate network Revenuewire CEO turned affiliate) use Continue reading →

Geordie Carswell Steps Down As Revenuewire CEO

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geordie carswellIf you use Pay Per Click (PPC) as a means of traffic generation for your websites, you’d have read blog posts by Revenuewire CEO Geordie Carswell over at the Revenuewire affiliate network.

It’s a loss for PPC marketers that Geordie will be stepping down as CEO on August 1st, though he will be continuing with Revenuewire on an advisory basis.

Geordie had published a number of tips and updates focused on utilitizing and optmizing Google AdWords since he started posting on the blog.

Perhaps as a sign of the changing of the guard, the blog format has been changed to something closer to an article directory – perhaps a sign that updates may not be as frequent either.

The Revenuewire CEO post will be filled by Continue reading →

Can Affiliate Marketing Play Nice With Web 2.0?

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I just had a great discussion with Market Leverage founder and CEO Mike Jenkins about developments in the affiliate marketing industry.

Market Leverage is taking the lead when it comes to relationship building and branding with measures like it’s care package campaign to the top affiliate bloggers, and initiatives like Market Leverage TV. Kudos to Mike and his team for getting on the radar with innovative social marketing strategies.

In the course of our discussion, I was wondering — Will affiliate marketing come to blows with social marketing and social media?

From my discussion with affiliate managers, it seems that the majority of affiliate marketers are only interested in the one-time pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale commission structures. Ask them about revenue share or continuity (eg: subscription/membership) type payouts and they aren’t as keen.

With some bizop offers paying out $100-120 per lead or sale, this could trigger the “quick cash” impulse among some affiliates.

On the other hand, savvy merchants and advertisers would’ve grasped the subtleties of lead generation, building up an leads database and reselling the data or marketing offers to that database, and in many scenarios employing both techniques.

In this case, rev share, especially for a CPA-based network will be a moot point.

This is the business model for “affiliate marketing 1.0” if you want to apply a label to it.

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With social marketing and its technologies like video, social networking, blogging, forums, etc, the emphasis is on building the relationship, forming a community, focusing on the long-term – pretty much a complete opposite to “affiliate marketing 1.0”.

Sure you could just take the tech aspects of social media – the viral marketing, the video and audio which massively increase conversions and leave the relationship benefits at the door. But does that strip social marketing of some of its inherent benefits? Do merely become an updated version of “social engineering” as practised by Kevin Mitnick and others?

It’ll be interesting to see how these initiatives pan out.

Tune in to the Friday Podcast tomorrow to check out the interview with Market Leverage founder Mike Jenkins.

Jeremy Palmer’s Black Ink Project Thunders Along…

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As top affiliate marketer Jeremy Palmer’s Black Ink Project moves into week 3, there’ve been a number of great guests who’ve presented and will be presented in the series.

First off, the site has undergone a design revamp:

jeremy palmer black ink project

Looking very sharp.

Yesterday (Monday), my buddy Amit Mehta presented his series of Pay-Per-Click strategies – the slides and recorded presentation are available for download.

Today, SEO specialist Aaron Wall will be presenting SEO and linking strategies.

It looks like the Black Ink Project will get many new affiliates off to a flying start.

black ink project week 3

On Friday, I’ll be presenting a session on social marketing strategies and building your online brand.

If you don’t already have access to this quality training, you should register at:

–> The Black Ink Project

The Market Leverage Schwag Bag….And Affiliate Offer Highlights

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I was a little shocked a couple of weeks ago when I received a huge FedEx box in the mail. I’d been expecting some materials from my friend Jim Lillig, but this monster of a box arrived.

It was a bag of schwag from affiliate network Market Leverage. I thought it was pretty clever of them to suss out my mailing address from my domain whois info, and they’re one of the few merchants and networks I’ve worked with who’s taken the effort to courier a box of stuff all the way to Singapore (the shipment costs came up to about $70!).

Many networks and merchants use the tagline that customer service, relationship building is their priority (together with “highest payouts, most number of exclusive offers”, etc), but Market Leverage delivers on its promise.

There was a fair bit of research to compile a list of affiliate bloggers and send them the care packages, together with the t-shirt campaign that the Market Leverage team had been doing – which shows how marketing and promotion ingenuity can bring you massive leverage.

Market Leverage’s president Sal Guarino certainly has foresight in bringing Dina Riccobono and Debby Phillips (the woman formerly known as Debby Banning on board). Dina’s clocked up video product experience working with Next Entertainment (which produced The Bachelor/The Bachelorette/Are You Hot?) and doubtless was instrumental in putting the concept together for the network’s MarketLeverageTV broadcasts. Debby’s pretty established in the blogosphere and her relationships and social networking will help build up the buzz effect among the blogging community. (google around and you’ll see a couple of “I wish I got a schwag bag” blog posts…).

One person who’s happy with the care package I received is my daughter, Bianca.

bianca wee

Although she’s happy with the “Future Blogger” t-shirt, the Market Leverage teddy bear and the Dora the Explorer game for now, I believe she’s eyeing the Flip Ultra which also came in the care package.

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Looking a little deeper in the Market Leverage offers available, I was particular keen on the exclusive offers which have a payout of $20 – $50 per lead or per sale – an area I typically focus on.

If you’re more focused on the zip/email submits with payouts ranging in the $1.20 – $2 range, there’re a number to choose from.

I’ve also had an opportunity to talk with my affiliate manager Erick Bright and it was encouraging to hear that similar to other top-tier networks, Market Leverage affiliate managers are contactable via IM, will give offer suggestions as you’re constructing your affiliate sites, and provide support as you’re launching new campaigns.

Check out:

–> Market Leverage Affiliate Network