However, you cut it and define it, there’re marketers out there who do their best to make use of Twitter, Squidoo, Hubpages, MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, Metacafe, Youtube, Revver, forums and other social networking site (of the “Web 2.0” ilk) to generate adsense or affiliate income.

Some of them are spectacularly successful, while others just flame up and die, and have their accounts deleted en-masse.

So is Web 2.0 a “dead” technology for marketers?

Are Web 2.0 site destined to become a dead graveyard populated by “internet polluters“?

I don’t think so.

This issue came up during the taping of a Friday Podcast session with Affiliate Classroom’s Marketing VP and affiliate marketing industry veteran Rachel Honoway.

I was pretty impressed that Web 2.0-based affiliates ranked alongside SEO, PPC, Coupon, shopping comparison and other types of profiled affiliates in Affiliate Classroom’s new AC Certified program for Affiliate Managers.

If you recall, Jim Kukral presented a session on “Bloggers as the Next Generation of Super Affiliates” at Affiliate Summit West 2007.

And it’s great to see these new generation of affiliate marketers being profiled in the new program, and even better, there’re tips for new and experienced affiliate managers to reach out to these marketers.

But back to “Web 2.0” for a second.

If you’ve been reading this blog over the last couple of weeks, you’d pick up the thread that this new breed of affiliates is focused on building conversations/conversation marketing as Internet Geek Girl Steph Agresta would say.

It’s about relationship marketing and community marketing…permission marketing plays a part in there as well.

For it to be truly effective, you need to be able to meet your prospects needs, and not bank on using a bunch of bulletins or PMs or mass broadcasts to bombard them with irrelevant offers (even at $100 a lead…), just because the technologies let you do so.

If I had my way, I’d hit the internet and do a global “search-and-replace” and replace all references of “web 2.0” with “social traffic” or “community building”.

But then again, isn’t enforcing your opinion on a mass basis, the equivalent of “curation” (a nice politically-correct phrase for “censorship”)?

I think I like freedom of expression better, so this is going into my Twitter stream.

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Keep an eye out for the Friday Podcast with Rachel Honoway tomorrow – there’re some goodies in store.

Rachel has been in the industry since 1997, starting as an intern at KowaBunga! Technologies, maker of the MyAffiliateProgram (myAP) affiliate tracking and management platform, and following it’s acquisition by Think Partnershi, was promoted to VP of marketing and client services.

Most recently, Rachel has taken on the portfolio Vice-President, Marketing at Anik Singal’s Affiliate Classroom.

Besides speaking at numerous tradeshows and seminars, Rachel’s an excellent resource for affiliate management.

I invited Rachel to come on the Friday Podcast and got her thoughts on a number of issues that merchants and affiliate networks would need to factor in their affiliate programs.

Some of the issues we discussed included:

• Changes in the affiliate marketing industry
• Key trends to look out for this year, especially in the convergence of affiliate marketing techniques
• Structuring an affiliate program, especially if deciding to go along the affiliate marketing, pay per lead, revenue share or cost per impression route

Most interesting is Affiliate Classroom’s new ACCertified program which Rachel is spearheading and will see a launch of sorts at the upcoming Affiliate Summit West with the Affiliate Classroom Live workshop on Saturday 23rd February.

The event features affiliate industry veterans like Lisa Riolo,  Heather Paulson, Schaaf Consulting’s Stephanie Harris and Bryan Rhodes, Ned Farra from Zappos and Steven Lerch, Todd Farmer and John Vehlewald of Think Partnershipâ€s KowaBunga! and PrimaryAds Networks.

You can check out the Friday Podcast below:

To sign up for the free workshop, head over to:

–> Affiliate Classroom Live workshop

If you STILL haven’t got your Affiliate Summit West tickets yet, you should get them now:

–> Affiliate Summit West

I’ll be heading to the US for this event which’ll be useful to bring my affiliate marketing skills to a new level.

Highlights for the event include topics such as:

• Marketing Your Affiliate Site – Outside of the Box
• How to Recruit Super Affiliates
• Optimizing with Your Merchant Partner
• The Current State of Online Lead Generation
• Anatomy of a Viral Video — Maximum ROI
• Search Affiliates: Partners or Parasites?
• Optimizing Landing Pages
• Next Generation Affiliate Recruitment – Why What You Know Doesn’t Work Anymore
• Panel: Lead Generation the New Kids On the Block

What I’m looking forward to though are three sessions:

• Bloggers – The New Super Affiliates (Super affiliates today are essentially the webmasters from 5-10 years ago. Bloggers are the next wave of super content producers, soon to be turned super affiliates; this session will discuss what affiliate managers can do with them.)
• What is Your Affiliate Management IQ? (Anik Singal, CEO, Affiliate Classroom, Inc.)
• Ask the Experts: Super Affiliates (This will is expected to be crazy because super affiliates Jon F (aojon.com and wickedfire.com) and Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker (shoemoney.com and shomemoneymedia.com) will be on the panel)

Oh, and Andrea wanted me to mention that I am excited to finally meet the infamous, beautiful and talented PlanetAndrea. (I think that’s all the adjectives she wanted me to include).

Will you be headed to Affiliate Summit West?

Update: Here’s the link for ASW’s signup

–> Affiliate Summit West