Haiko De Poel is founder of the ABestWeb affiliate marketing forum, one of the most established, having been around for 7 years and recently surpassing it’s 50,000th member mark.
As a new internet marketer, I got a lot of value out of Haiko’s “Affiliate Marketing Today” podcast show on the Webmaster Radio network. Credited with having coined the term “Parasitware”, Haiko’s one of the senior statesmen in the industry, having been an advocate for affiliate marketers’ rights for some time.
During our discussion on the Friday Podcast, we talked about:
How Haiko first got involved with affiliate marketing
The origins of the ABestWeb forum
Burning issues that were prevalent about 5 years ago and still rear their head today, especially with parasiteware
The recent controversy with the OneCause toolbar redirect affiliate links, and it’s possible conflict of interest with holding company Rakuten also own the LinkShare affiliate network
The New York affiliate tax issue and its implications for the industry
How and why affiliates need to speak up for their rights and some of Haiko’s initiatives in that direction
I had the opportunity to discuss topics shaping the affiliate marketing industry with Haiko De Poel Jr, founder and owner of the ABestWeb affiliate marketing forum for my Friday Podcast series out this week.
During the course of our conversation, the topic of the value added to the affiliate-merchant relationship came up multiple times, and it’s certainly a point worth focusing on, especially if you’re in the affiliate marketing game for the long haul.
Let’s start off with the definition of “value” for affiliates.
As a performance-based affiliate, you’re only paid upon the successful purchase or adoption of a product or service you’re promoting. In the past and also today, value manifests itself in making your affiliate site more visible than the merchants. In some cases, this means having your site show up when someone types (more…)
When I first started reading Haiko De Poel’s ABestWeb affiliate marketing forum, one of the things that mystified me was this lady who said she was going around giving people Loxly hugs at Affiliate Summit.
It’s no surprise that Deborah Carney AKA Loxly has built up significant goodwill through her journey as an affiliate, affiliate manager and currently, affiliate outsourced program manager (OPM).
Loxly is one of my secret resources and I find myself consulting her on business building and marketing strategies. The fact that she posts prodigiously on ABW and is available nearly 24-7 on Skype says a lot about her commitment and work ethic to the affiliate industry.
Besides catching her session at the recent Affiliate Summit West 08 in Vegas at the ABW panel discussion, you can also tune into the latest edition of the Friday Podcast where we discussed:
Affiliate strategies for new affiliates
How and when merchants should evaluate and engage outsourced (affiliate) program managers
The content management system of choice for affiliates
Twitter continues to be log-jammed, and I think every social network – MySpace, Facebook, MyBlogLog, all go through this phase.
In the case of MySpace, it’s become the hotbed of unmoderated bulletin spam and private message spam for ringtones, free ipod/xbox360/nintendo WII email/zip submit offers. I bet it’s going to take some doing to clear all that muck.
With Facebook, they’re taken the opposite tack of placing a cap on the number of private messages you can send out, limiting the ability of popular group owners to communicate with their members – forcing some to set up off-site bulletin boards to send broadcast messages out.
With MyBlogLog, the platform has a built a good userbase with its blog widget (though guys like Shoemoney had showed that it was pretty easy to abuse the “recent visitors” feature of it). The major sticking point is that Yahoo! doesn’t seem to have a concrete social media strategy (or at least an integrated one in place). I’m still hoping to see some of its community features like it’s Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Shopping, Mash social platform and MyBlogLog properties come together. And in my book, come together means more than a single unified Yahoo! login to tie the pieces together.
Even a 1-2 page weekly or bi-weekly updates or “What’s Hawt!” newsletter would serve to bring some of the pieces together…
So what’s the deal with Twitter’s sputtering and throttling down the flow of data?
This past weekend was a busy one, as I’ve been shifting one of my home offices around. My 10mbps DSL connection finally works over ethernet (I was struggling with poor signals over a 802.11g network previously). Every LAN point in my home should provide connectivity. So now I have wireless and wired Internet and LAN access from just about every bedroom, as well as the living room, dining room, kitchen and the toilets if the need arises…
While I was huffing and puffing on Sunday manhandling my heavy desk and moving the computer, monitors and bunches of cables around, I was listening to the huge backlog of MP3s I had downloaded over the past couple of weeks.
I probably listened to about 10 hours of audio over the weekend and was more active than usual in my twitter stream too.
I think it’s important to use your “downtime” well, especially if you’re working on your taxes, cleaning the desk, clearing your inbox (snail mail and email), or sorting out your baseball card collection (or samurai katana collection if that’s up your alley).
Here’s my list of favorite podcasts at the moment:
#1: Geekcast (the podcast, not the network…) -Â A collaboration between Shawn Collins, Sam Harrelson, Lisa Picarille and Jim Kukral, I’d classify it as a industry banter session. I can identify with Lisa’s sentiment that it seems unstructured at times, but I think it’s part of the fun, especially as the show hosts go off on each other.
There was some drama recently as Shawn and Sam had a spat with Jim, but all seems well now, and we should have the 4 musketeers back in the seat. The show is recorded every Tues and Sam usually has the podcast up within 24 hours.
Be sure to check out the “Sorry, Jangro” drinking game that accompanies the podcast.
This week I had an opportunity to discuss the power of networking at live events with Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins.
Shawn Collins (left) with new Affiliate Summit intern Jack Collins
Shawn is one of the most experienced and friendliest contacts I have made since getting involved in affiliate marketing and I appreciate the fact that he’s a friend whom I consult over IM and through the email.
It was great to hear how Shawn got started in affiliate marketing in 1997 as an affiliate for Amazon, and how he’s progressed to founding the Affiliate Summit seminar/tradeshow with Missy Ward, manages the Affiliate Tip blog, Authored “Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants”, his annual AffStat report, the weekly Affiliate Thing weekly podcast co-hosted with Revenue magazine editor Lisa Picarille, an Affiliate Manager forum and probably 100 other projects, including one which will be launched soon.
Here’re some of the topics we discussed:
How to get value out of attending seminars and events (as opposed to staying home and reading blogs and forums)
Important things you should do BEFORE and AFTER attending an event
How to catch all the conferences free
How to gain an unfair networking advantage at ASW
How to get free consulting from industry veterans and experts at the event
Haiko De Poel is founder of the ABestWeb affiliate marketing forum, one of the most established, having been around for 7 years and recently surpassing it’s 50,000th member mark.
When I first started reading Haiko De Poel’s ABestWeb affiliate marketing forum, one of the things that mystified me was this lady who said she was going around giving people Loxly hugs at Affiliate Summit.