Tag Archives: affiliate marketing

Friday Podcast: Affiliate Marketing and Affiliate OPM Tips With Loxly

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loxly AKA Deborah Carney by BillyKayWhen 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

Liberally sprinkled with Loxly wisdom.

Be sure to also check out:

Check out the Friday Podcast or download it for listening later:

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Friday Podcast: Affiliate Management with Carolyn Tang

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carolyn tangI invited affiliate network ShareASale Director of Client Services, Carolyn Tang, on the Friday Podcast this week to get her thoughts on:

  • How merchants can use affiliate marketing as a sales channel for their products and services
  • How to conduct due diligence when deciding whether to set up and operate their affiliate program or list it on an affiliate network
  • How merchants can enhance their “affiliate relationship management” skills
  • ShareASale’s “best practises” initiatives (possibly for merchants and affiliates – something I’m looking forward to checking out).

Check out: ShareASale

Access the podcast below:

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    Friday Podcast: CPA Marketing with Market Leverage’s Mike Jenkins

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    mike jenkins market leverageFlorida-based CPA network Market Leverage has generated a fair amount of buzz with it’s Market Leverage TV video broadcasts and recent t-shirt campaigns and “care package” campaigns targeted at some of the most popular bloggers in the affiliate space, including John Chow, Shoemoney, Amit Mehta, Zac Johnson, Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman, Chad Fredericksen, Ian Fernando, Kim Rowley and numerous others.

    Market Leverage ranks as one of the networks which effectively uses its marketing and branding budget to devastating effect. By contrast, I work with several networks with great affiliates managers, and one corp comm/PR person who isn’t really empowered to do much and/or doesn’t have any real budget to work with.

    As networks see affiliate acquisition as part of the affiliate management success formula, doubtless there’ll be more resources channeled towards building a quality affiliate base.

    I appreciated Market Leverage’s Digital Media Relations specialist Debby Phillips arranging a discussion with Market Leverage’s founder and CEO Mike Jenkins.

    Mike’s certainly savvier than the average network owner (who’s typically a successful affiliate marketer turned network owner). Conducting some research, I’ve found that Mike has been involved in the business management aspects for a number of pretty large listed firms too.

    I especially like how he’s constructed a holistic business ecosystem under his PrecisionPlayMedia group – with 3 components – DigitalLeads (an in-house offer production/packaging subsidiary), Market Leverage (the CPA network arm) and InboxBeyond (an email publishing arm) – which is how the top tier CPA networks structure their business.

    During the discussion, we also touched on, but haven’t fully resolved the issue of whether the community-building /relationship-building approaches of social marketing via blogs,video will eventually clash head-on with the current incarnation of affiliate marketing, with the mostly shorter emphasis on one-off lead acquisition payout.

    It’ll also be interesting to track Market Leverage’s upcoming announcements in the next 2-3 months.

    Check out the Friday Podcast below:

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    For sign up as an affiliate, visit:

    –> Market Leverage

    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.

    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

    Friday Podcast: Niche Site Development with Zac Johnson

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    Zac JohnsonI had a chance to talk with Super Affiliate Zac Johnson’s and pick his brain on his strategy in developing niche sites.

    Some of the points we touched on:

    • How he got his start in internet marketing
    • How he developed a niche site which received 180,000 visitors per day and was hosted on 16 Dell servers
    • How he researches and develops new niche sites
    • His viral marketing strategies
    • Tips for new affiliates developing their websites

    Tune in for another episode of the Friday Podcast

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    And visit: ZacJohnson.com