Internet marketer Steve Schaffer who was also at the booth mentioned that Amazon’s lack of analytics was hampering the efforts of affiliates.

Amazon affiliates will realized that tracking is limited to a maximum of 200 tracking IDs (which need to be created through the affiliate panel), preventing the insertion of tracking IDs.

PPC affiliates or other affiliates which dynanimically insert tracking data within the Sub ID field will find their marketing efforts seriously hampered by this.

The feedback from Zahid was that “affiliates have not requested this”.

What?

I’m not sure if Amazon is seriously listening to this, but I don’t think they are actively soliciting affiliate feedback to enhance their systems. The end result is that a growth in affiliate revenue will benefit the company.

Routinely conducting affiliate polls or focused interviews would seem to be the basis for a quality improvement program. And if it is in place, it certainly needs to be overhauled.

–

Another insight: There are no plans for an increase to the 24 hour duration of affiliate tracking cookies. And if it gives you any consolation, eBay’s 7-day cookie was cited as a comparable benchmark.

So, if you’re conducting any element of follow up marketing, via email or other means, there is a chance you’ll not be renumerated for your efforts.

–

If you’re already an Amazon affiliate, this will not really be news to you.

With affiliates contributing 25% towards Amazon’s sales, I’d consider it a viable sales channel and would think that they would put more into the equation to make it an attractive program for affiliates.

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

I’ve the honor of moderating an affiliate marketers panel with panelists: Geordie Carswell, NickyCakes and Miles Baker in attendance.

The session is geared towards newer and experienced marketers who’d like to tap on the expertise of the panel which spans search engine optimization, pay-per-click marketing, social media and blogging.

The panelists and I are compiling questions for the session.

If you’ve a question or issue, go ahead and list it in the comments below.

Next on the list would be the terrific networking events and parties, especially the near legendary ones hosted by the ShareASale affiliate network, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get to bring home a polaroid with SAS founder Brian Littleton in his trademark sweatervests.

This isn’t to say that the sessions are to be unrated. This upcoming summit will feature speakers like previous Friday Podcast guests – affiliates Geordie Carswell, Nickycakes, Miles Baker, Jeremy Palmer, John Hasson, Zac Johnson, Market Leverage CEO Mike Jenkins, Scott Jangro, Buy.com’s Melissa Salas, Amit Mehta, Anik Singal, as well as “Sugarrae” Rae Hoffman, Carolyn “CShel” Shelby, PartnerCentric CEO and founder Linda Woods, affiliate OPM Andy Rodriguez, ABestWeb founder Haiko de Poel Jr, FlamingoWorld CEO Connie Berg, Brian Littleton, SEER Interactive’s Wil Reynolds, Ros Gardner and Ian Fernando.

I think the upcoming summit boasts a stellar speakers lineup and it’ll be a hard decision to split my time between the educational sessions and panels vs time in the exhibit hall.

I managed to squeeze some details from Shawn Collins about the Affiliate Triathlon. He said “There will be three secret events of skill and dexterity and the competitor with the highest overall score wins.” – which translated means you’ll probably have to do something silly and likely mildly embarrass yourself, but will look pretty cool in pictures and do something great for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

The event which runs from Jan 11-13, currently still has tickets available, though Shawn has mentioned that the bulk of registrations come in 60 days before the event and are available now, though it’s hard to tell how long they’ll last.

The Affiliate Summit is held at the same time as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and adult industry’s AVN (Adult Video Network) awards at the Mandalay Bay. So catching a porn starlet might be a minor perk for some attending the summit? The affiliate networks and especially CPA networks are known for innovative events and mixers at these events, so maybe we’ll see Tila Tequila (former Playboy playmate Tila Ngyuen and star of the “A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila” reality show). Incidentally, Tila’s born in Singapore and if you think I’m pulling your leg, check out her Wikipedia entry. Obviously, since college students are submitting their senior essays based on Wikipedia, it’s as good as the Encyclopedia Brittanica, right?

But back to the Affiliate Summit…

WineLibrary.tv creator and presenter Gary “Bring the Thunder” Vaynerchuk who kicked butt at the “marketing with video” panel discussion at the last ASW will be delivering the keynote this time. It should be a great session with Gary’s trademark energy, candor and humor.

The deadline for getting your room at the summit group rate of $159/night is valid till Dec 9th, though it’s likely to run out before then. Check out the group reservation rate.

Jeremy Palmer mentioned a code “PKGR2CT” for a $0.02 Tuesday if you stay at least 2 nights. You may or may not be able to use the code in conjunction with the group rate.

–

Lastly, get your tickets now if you haven’t yet, the summit reservation link is here. [Use discount code: ASW09WHOISAW to save 10% off any type of pass]

If you have an active affiliate blog or report on internet marketing news, you can apply for a media pass.

Viva Las Vegas.

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 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

John spoke at the “Meet The Experts” session chairing a table on PPC affiliate marketing. At the recent Affiliate Summit East in Boston, John presented a session on PPC marketing.

During the course of our discussion, I was pretty amazed at how John’s brought his programming skills to automate and employ leverage in PPC campaigns.

We also talked about:

• How John got started as a programmer early on and his first experience at generating $600 a day through PPC arbitrage
• How he made his transition into affiliate marketing
• Tips to succeed in PPC affiliate marketing

You can access the Friday Podcast below:

Note: John was travelling as part of a project he’s working on and the line dropped a  number of times and the connection wasn’t the best. Listen in for some great tips though.

You can visit John’s blog at JohnHasson.com

Kim has come up with a number of great concepts for niche sites, and more than just the idea alone, she’s certainly one to take immediate action.

Although we’d talked a little before this past Affiliate Summit West and chatted briefly at the Summit, we’d been sharing some ideas in recent weeks and I was glad that she was able to take some time out to come on the podcast.

Besides hearing about her start in internet marketing, we also talked about strategies in setting up coupon/shopping/comparison type shopping sites and growing your online business.

As with previous Friday Podcasts, we covered a lot of ground in this episode and you can check out the podcast below:

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…) -  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.

#2: Affiliate Summit Sessions Podcast: If you missed the recent Affiliate Summit West, or even if you attended, you probably wouldn’t have had an opportunity to attend every session as there were 4 simultaneous sessions with many great sessions in the same time slot. I enjoyed listening to the “How To Futureproof Your SEO Efforts” by Wil Reynolds, the video innovation panel chaired by Buy.TV’s Melissa Salas, the social media panel chaired by Sam, the super affiliate panel with Kris Jones, Zac Johnson, Amit Mehta and John Chow, the ABestWeb panel….I haven’t had a chance to listen to all the sessions yet, but there’s quite a hoard of great content there.

You might also like to check out the editorial panel I appeared on.

#3: Affiliate Fortune Cookies: A 5-day a week podcast from Sam, it’s his take on Lost, science fiction, social media, affiliate marketing and whatever else comes to mind. As Sam mentions, it’s intended to be a personal podcast and you can kind of hear his existential angst, especially when it comes to affiliate marketing/internet marketing in recent episodes.

Those are my top 3 podcasts at the moment, given the limited time I spend sitting and listening to podcasts.

You might also like to check out Shawn and Lisa’s Affiliate Thing podcast on Webmaster Radio, Linda Woods’ Affiliate Marketing Insider also on WMR. They’re other podcasts on the Geekcast network.

Another resource I highly recommend are the past episodes of Affiliate Marketing Today, especially the episodes hosted by AbestWeb owner Haiko De Poel and the later season hosted by Jeremy Palmer. These sessions provide a great foundation in affiliate marketing for new marketers.

I keep hearing that GarageBand is a great software suite for podcasting on the Mac, and I might fire up my new MacBook to test it out soon.

Also on the cards is a live podcast via Skype’s SkypeCast service one of these days when I have a little more time on my hands.

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.

–

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

• Co-founding the Affiliate Summit with Missy Ward (the next Affiliate Summit East is from Aug 10-12 in Boston)
• Multiple updates on his Affiliate Tip blog
• His sarcastic and wry style on Affiliate Thing (together with co-host Revenue Magazine editor Lisa Picarille)
• His relative new foray into group podcasting at Geekcast.fm together with partners-in-crime Sam Harrelson and Jim Kukral. (Jim did a video interview with me in the midst of the recent Affiliate Summit West)

If you like Shawn’s Road Trip/American Pie-ish style of humor, you’d want to check out this Easter bunny video broadcast:

Also, check out this Facebook thread where we’re aiming to hit 500 comments. Every little comment helps!

At Affiliate Summit West with ASW co-founders Shawn Collins and Missy Ward

If it was your first Affiliate Summit or you would like to get more out of your trip, here’re my suggestions:

• Follow Up

Yes, you can mass mail all the people you met, but social marketing/conversational marketing is what’s going to give you an edge in building relationships and bringing your business to the next level. Include a personal note, talk about winning that $15,000 top prize at the slot machines at 3am, or downing round-after-round of shots at the Ghost Bar. People connect best with those they have a personal connection with.

For more tips check out “Internet Geek Girl” Stephanie Agresta’s blog. She’s mentioned she’s really good at the following up part.

Here’re 2 things I’ve learned from my consulting to brick-and-mortar companies, 2 things need to stand out and are probably more important than the sale (whether it’s the sale of a product/service or inking of a service/consulting contract). The pre-sales and the post-sales.

Pre-sales might’ve taken place at your Affiliate Summit booth, or over dinner, or at one of the parties. Post-sales means you continue keeping in touch with your customers/partners even after the project has been kicked off or the product has been delivered.

Is it too soon? Too late?

I’d say that you have a 2-week window to drop people a note after the summit. After 2 weeks, it’s difficult to place a reference.

• Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize

You have a business to run, maybe a day job and a family or significant other to take care of or spend time with. So you need to sort out your business contacts:

Who should you get touch with immediately.

Who should you get in touch with within the next 7 days.

And then there’s everyone else that you follow up with when you have time. Eg. checking your email on your iPhone during the boring bits at a meeting, or while waiting for someone and you’re in a WiFi zone.

• Lessons Learned And Key Takeaways

Yes, it’s not as cool to keep a diary or notebook (the paper-based variety!) anymore, but let’s face it, you’ll forget 50% of what you learned a week later, and 50% of whatever remains a month from now, and so on. Pretty soon, you’ll forget that you were even at the Affiliate Summit!

I keep multiple text files on my computer, labelled:

• PPC-tips.txt
• marketing-pointers.txt
• contact-info.txt
• trial-super-affiliate-exclusives.txt

and so on. If there’s going to be an invite-only launch for a new product or service, I need to keep track of when it starts, how long it’s running for, and most important my account name and password.

If going to a couple of great parties and meeting “celebrities” was the highlight of ASW for you, you’re sure missing out on a lot of good stuff!

• Bringing Home More Bacon!

Typically I come home with a list of 10 new things to test out in my existing campaigns, or new product ideas to test out. This past summit was no different.

By “testing out something new”, it has to be more than adding a new widget that someone mentioned during a session or during a conversation, I’d do a benchmark to see what the results are before testing a new strategy, then I’d test the new strategy.

Going one step further, I’d develop 3 more variations of that idea and test those too. It’d be like a mini multi-variate test if you will. And only after enough data has been collected will I continue testing the two best performing strategies out of the bunch of 5 tests.

Going by past experience, I’ve seen modest increases of 10-20% testing new techniques, with the occasional 50% jump in my results. If that doesn’t already pay for the cost of your trip and room and board and entertainment, I’d be hard pressed to find an alternative.

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To give you an idea of how important attending live events is to my business, I’m already making plans to attend Affiliate Summit East in Boston from August 10-12 later this year.

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

Heather is a ReveNews writer/blogger who interviewed me for her “Internet Expansion Into Asia” piece last November, as well as founder and president of internet marketing consultancy and outsourced affiliate program manager, Paulson Management Group.

Heather has thrown down the gauntlet to the members of the Affiliate Fit Club, two teams of affiliates and affiliate members who were aiming to compete and lose weight by Affiliate Summit West a la “The Biggest Loser” format.

The members include veterans like Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral, Wade Tonkin, Karen Garcia, Lisa Riolo and Wade Sisson.

The affiliate fit club had been an inspriation to me, especially since working in front of a computer every day and not getting out much has meant the scale has hovered at 192 lbs for quite some time (especially after having great eats in the US each time I’m there for a seminar or event).

I’ve started swimming for about 20 minutes a couple of times a week (you need to get at least 20 minutes of rigorous exercise to get the metabolic rate into its “fat burning” phase.) and have lost about 5 lbs over the last week.

I’m definitely game to take part in it, if it opens up again. I’m highly competitive, so I’ll be in to win!

So it was pretty inspirational to hear that Heather has lost about 35 lbs (possibly more since the last Affiliate Summit – I’m not sure if she meant ASW last Feb or Affiliate Summit East in Miami last July). In any case, 35 lbs is very impressive!

She’s also thrown down this challenge:

And I’m sure she’ll be pretty smoking in a swimsuit.

Shawn’s mentioned that he’ll be in a tux at 6pm that day (kinda expected given that he’s one of the organizers for Affiliate Summit West). He’s also mentioned that the AFC has kinda fizzled out (Their last post was on 18th November on the Affiliate Fit Club blog).

And I thought it was pretty strategic for Heather to have this right after the Christian Affiliate Marketer’s Association “Gospel Brunch” that day. Where I have the feeling I might be challenging Wade Tonkin to see how much White Chocolate Walnut Cookies and White Chocolate Banana Bread Pudding we can chow down.

If they do show up, I am fairly sure the Affiliate Fit Club is set for a downfall…

But more importantly, if it does go through, you can be sure that pictures of Heather in a bikini and the members of the Affiliate Fit Club in their Swimsuit Showdown will make it to this blog.

Stay tuned…

–

If you haven’t yet, get your tickets for:

–> Affiliate Summit West (use code Affiliate Summit West coupon code “ANDREW10” for a 10% discount)

–> Christian Affiliate Marketers Association Gospel Brunch

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

The podcast can be accessed below:

46 mins 36 secs : 22 mb

Affiliate Summit West is from Feb 24-26 at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. Last year the tickets ran out and scalpers were having a field day on eBay.

And Shawn has given a special Affiliate Summit coupon code for my blog readers “ANDREW10” which will give you a 10% discount off your tickets.

Here’s the registration link: Affiliate Summit West.

Get your tickets early to avoid disappointment, and if you’re headed for ASW, I look forward to seeing you there.

Unlike the past Affiliate Summit where I found myself hiking from Harrah’s (which has great prime rib) to Bally’s every morning, I was determined to get lodging at the Rio where the summit will be held.

Having said that, here’s some summit survival tips:

• Take the bus if you have time and like to see the city. It costs about $6 for a 1-way ticket and stops at most of the major hotels. It does take a little time to get around though because it stops at quite a number of hotels.
• Wear comfortable walking shoes as you’ll be pounding the show floor if you’re diligent about meeting merchants and networks (I only got through about 25% of the booths the last time round because I was talking to and got waylaid by people as I was walking around).
• Carry a backpack if you don’t want to be lugging your schwag all over the place. Especially if there’re booths giving out Plasma TVs, Xbox360s and Nintendo WIIs (I think most of us can go out and buy one, it’s just the ultra competitive streaks in every motivated affiliates that comes out when it comes to competitions…)

With that out of the way, and a 15 hour plane ride (I’m taking a direct Singapore-Los Angeles flight on a brand spanking new Airbus A380 this time) ahead, what’s in store at Affiliate Summit?

The fun begins before the event starts.

Anik Singal and his Affiliate Classroom team have organized Affiliate Classroom Live, a 1-day workshop for affiliate managers on Saturday 23 Feb. What’s more it’s free…Places are very limited though, so check out:

–> Anik Singal’s Affiliate Classroom Live

Chase the workshop with Brook Schaaf’s Affiliate Dinner. Expect to see a guest of honor. Expect to see the guest of honor roasted…What fun!

Is Affiliate Dinner a ponzi scheme? Here’s the answer…

—

So day 1 of the summit kicks off with the “Affiliate Meet Market” from noon to 6pm. I missed this the last time because of a delayed flight, but I’m arriving a day early to make sure I am able to take part in the meet-and-greet and associated networking.

Here’s the floorplan for the Affiliate Meet Market. (PDF format)

–

Day 2 kicks off with Jason Calacanis’ keynote.

With Jason recently refering to “Affiliate Spam” “polluting” the search engines at the Paris Le Web seminar, you can expect some fireworks during the keynote.

–

One note about the presentations that follow. An overwhelming number of presentation proposals were submitted, with the result that about 4 presentations are simultaneously ongoing during each time slot. In many cases, you have great sessions going on at the same time.

I checked with Shawn and he mentioned that the sessions will be recorded and available for viewing later.

I’d suggest prioritizing your favorite sessions and making a beeline for them. In some cases I can see the majority of the crowd gravitating towards ONE session…

Forewarned is forearmed…

I’ve listed some of the sessions I personally am interested in attending:

As I’ve been doing a number of podcast and vlogging (video blogging) lately, I’m keen to check this session out.

I met Buy.com’s Melissa Salas last Feb at ASW, and she present a pretty great show for Buy.com over at Buy.Tv.
(As of last October, on the BuyTV MySpace page it’s mentioned that “BuyTV was just informed that it has been picked up for local programming via Time Warner, Cox, Charter, DirecTV, Echostar, Dish Network and others – Sunday mornings at 11:30am PST”)

And you have a panel of other video marketing/video blogging folks on the panel.

–

Seer Interactive’s Wil Reynolds is always a popular presenter, and I’m looking forward to checking out his presentation ahead of his session.

—

Day 3 kicks off with an “Ask the Experts” session:

I’m keen to talk to Heather Paulson about her new Paulson Management Group company.

A little later in the day, be sure to check out:

A media panel chaired by Revenue Magazine’s Lisa Picarille. Besides myself, you’ll also see Jim Kukral, Anik Singal and Valerie Stevens on the panel.

In parallel with the media panel is the Super Affiliate panel:

With the likes of Pepperjam’s Kris Jones, John Chow, Zac Johnson and Amit Mehta in attendance.

And if you’re not already torn between two or more sessions, consider that later in the afternoon, you’ll have the ABestWeb panel:

With AbestWeb’s Haiko De Poel, AffiliateCrew’s Chuck Hamrick and Team Loxly’s Loxly AKA Deb Carney in attendance.

In the same time slot you have the social marketing panel:

With a Who’s Who of the blogosphere/social media space, like Sam Harrelson, Tris Hussey, Stephanie Agresta among others.

I would point out more highlights, but my fingers are worn-out from all that typing, so you might like to check out:

–> Affiliate Summit West 2008

I added a note to my Facebook profile to add a countdown alert (via the Top Countdowns application).

So some of the choices available:

I picked the 2nd from the bottom cos it looked kinda “slot machine-ish”. [You’d have to pay a hefty sum to see the cupcakes on my profile……….]

After I added it, I was thinking about unconventional uses, specifically guerilla tactics for Facebook applications for affiliate marketers…

If we get a chance to talk at Affiliate Summit West next month in Vegas, you’ll discover that I do niche and product research very differently from other affiliates – whether SEO, blackhat or PPC affiliates.

I believe a lot of it has to do with my background in journalism…

During the dotcom era in early 2000, the startups which were on the verge of crashing-and-burning didn’t have much incentive to give you an exclusive interview, or give out any clues as to what was happening.

So I’ve developed an intuitive demographic/psychographic behavioral-based system to my research process and marketing campaigns…

So looking at the Facebook Top Countdowns application, think about it for a moment, what events are people likely to bookmark? Important ones? Significant events?

Think people will be motivated to pull a “sickie” to be able to catch a major sports event (the Olympics, the Super Bowl, World Cup Soccer), launch of a new book or movie (like the Harry Potter novel or movie, or Star Wars), or new product (like the next Nintendo WII or incarnation of the Apple iPhone or iPod)?

If anything, events like Valentine’s Day, the start of the new season of popular TV shows like Prison Break, Lost and American Idol Season 7 have all been flagged for you.

Smart affiliate marketers merely need to match these events with an appropriate affiliate or CPA offer and count the sales come in.

Failing which, you could always celebrate Chuck Norris’ birthday on March 10th…