The auction closes this Friday, August 28th, 1159pm. Some of the bid prices are ridiculously low at the moment, so if you put in a bid for charity, you’ll either get the product or service at a steal, or you’ll be doing your part to aim in breast cancer research and relief.

You can check out Missy’s fundraising auction post.

Here’re some of my personal top picks for the auctions:

• Two hours of consulting with Lisa Riolo: Lisa was formerly affiliate network Commission Junction’s senior vice president for business development and has had management roles at brick-and-mortar institutions like Bank of America and Peet’s Coffee. Besides the obvious affiliate marketing issues you might raise with her, she’d be pretty experienced in the operations side of running and growing a business too. The auction is currently in the $100+ region, and even if you were to contribute the retail value of $1,000, there’s no doubt that her advice would bring your business to the next level. (check out my Friday Podcast interview with Lisa R).
• Two hours of consulting with Lisa Picarille: Affiliates might know Lisa as the former publisher/editor-in-chief of Revenue Magazine, the performance marketing standard, as well as co-host of the Affiliate Thing and TheSpew podcasts. You may not know that she’s a wealth of experience with print, radio and online content publishing. Whether you’re a merchant, network or affiliate, you’ll be able to bounce ideas off Lisa which will help you on the media and content elements of your business. Again, the $100+ bid is ridiculously low, and even the $300 retail value is lowballing the potential benefits. I’d realistically value the advice you could get from Lisa at at least $1,000. (check out my Friday Podcast with Lisa P).
• Affiliate Summit West 2010 Platinum conference pass (Las Vegas): Gives you all-access pass to the conference sessions and trade show. If you network effectively at this event with merchants, networks and fellow affiliates, there’s no reason why your affiliate business won’t double or triple (at the minimum) from the networking you’ll be doing. In a number of cases, affiliate incomes have increased exponentially as a result of face-to-face meetups at the event.
• Thesis WordPress template/framework developer’s pack: Thesis is a SEO-friendly WP template that can be customized easily to replace other website publishing tools you’re currently using. I’m developing a new set of affiliate sites using Thesis and with the SEO features, it get much more visibility from organic traffic. Also, designer Chris Pearson has placed a strong emphasis on typography, so readability and usability are greatly enhanced. The lifetime upgrades and great support at the forum is worth its ticketed price many times over. Again, the bids are ridiculously low at this point ($30) on a $164 retail value. (read my Thesis product review for more information)
• Market Leverage A-List Experience: The highlight of this package is dinner at the Eiffel Tower restaurant at the Paris Hotel and Casino with Market Leverage social media manager, Dina Riccobono. If that’s not enough, you’ll also get coverage on MarketLeverage TV and be featured on JohnChow.com. With a little out-of-the-box thinking, this package can significantly boost your branding and bring a number of benefits to your business. (Disclaimer: I’m also bidding on this package). (Check out some of Dina’s tips from the Friday Podcast on videocasting and social media branding)

Although I’ve mentioned just a few of the packages up for auction, do check out the various packages available, you’ll be getting resources to grow your business and doing a lot of good for charity too!

With prizes like gift cards and mini laptops on the line, there’s been a long line of applicants to Market Leverage in order to participate in the contest. (Note: for this specific contest, you have to be Singapore-based in order to qualify).

The sticking point has been getting approved – to date, there’s only 1 eligible contestant in the contest.

One of the “risks” in making this contest only for Singapore-based affiliates is that there might be zero participants in the contest – not because there’s no interest, but because international affiliates in general have to take number of additional steps in order to get their affiliate applications approved, compared to their US counterparts (a point I highlighted during my appearance on Missy Ward’s TheSpew Episode “The SpewGirls Go Global” ).

Here are a couple of tips to be successfully approved as an affiliate on a CPA or affiliate network:

• Avoid using a free email provider like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail. If you need to, set the services up so that you have pop3 access to your own domain and send email via your own domain.
• For your website, setting up a Blogspot blog or Squidoo lens, writing 5-10 blog or content posts and submitting it as your website has the same problem with using a free email address. There’s effort involved, but likewise, a potentially fradulent affiliate could do likewise in hopes of getting approved.
• Proactively follow up on your application. In 2006, I signed up with my first affiliate network. I filled in the application, called the customer service number, got myself verified and my account was approved immediately. If you’re an international affiliate, you’ll incur a long distance call charge doing so. But if you’re looking at affiliate marketing and internet marketing as a business, it’s a minimal expense.
• Your domain should be registered using your name or your business name and contain accurate information. If you’re applying saying you’re a Singapore affiliate and your domain name says the contact person is based in Libya…chances are you aren’t going to get approved.

The bottomline in getting approved as an affiliate is showing that you’re a real person. Affiliate networks have a compliance team which reviews affiliate applications and rejects those that seem dubious.

To avoid that hassle, spend a little time filling in the application and following up. Better yet, head to the tradeshows like the upcoming Affiliate Summit East in July in New York City and meet the affiliate networks yourself.

Check out the WhoIsAndrewWee.com Affiliate Challenge, sponsored by Market Leverage

During our conversation, we talked about:

• The history and growth of the Geekcast podcast network and upcoming plans
• The expansion and growth of content on Geekcast beyond just affiliate marketing
• Incentives and admission criteria for would-be Geekcast podcasters
• Details and the launch of Missy’s new podcast, “The Spew”, soon to debut on Geekcast in late March
• The addition of video content on Geekcast
• Shawn’s tips on getting started as a podcaster
• How to organize and structure a winning podcast
• The growth of FeedFront magazine
• The upcoming inclusion of AffStat data in FeedFront
• Missy’s new involvement with the affiliate program for DIYThemes (publisher of the Thesis WordPress theme)
• Highlights and details of the upcoming Affiliate Summit East (Aug 9-11, New York City)

Check out the Friday Podcast below:

Links:

• Geekcast
• FeedFront
• Join the DIY Themes affiliate program
  
• Affiliate Summit East

Here’s more goodness from the Affiliate Summit:

ShareASale’s Director of Client Services Carolyn Tang AKA Catango is one of the most pleasant and knowledgeable individuals in the industry and it was a pleasure to talk to her at the SaS booth, even though there were lots of people there.

As a tradeshow visitor, I’ve got more than my fair share of t-shirts, notepads, pens, paper weights and stationery to last 2.5 lifetimes. I liked how SaS did a little out of the box thinking to provide a photobooth where affiliates took some crazy pics (I’ll post mine later), and thoughtfully gave out baby T-shirts and bears. For affiliates with families or significant others, they’ll likely be seeing the SaS logo on a teddy bear or baby T for some time to come. (a good thing).

Check out the Friday Podcast interview on Affiliate Program Strategies with Carolyn Tang.

It was cool hanging out with top affiliates Colin “Google” McDougall and Ros Gardner over dinner at the Nobu Japanese restaurant at the Hard Rock for the private launch of Jim Lillig’s Offeratti network.

Considering that Colin doesn’t take raw food, it’s a testament to the great food at Nobu that Colin was enjoying the sashimi with the rest of us during the meal. It was also interesting to hear Colin tell his stories about his towed trailer that he rolls out for holidays. And if you’re looking for inspiration as you’re working towards your ideal affiliate lifestyle, Ros has bought a lot of nice toys/trinkets to enjoy the fruits of her labor.

It was great to meet affiliate network Market Leverage‘s marketing manager Dina Riccobono after talking to her over IM and being interviewed for MLTV late last year.

Market Leverage has a proactive outreach and affiliate recruitment program and it’s refreshing to see a network take the intiative in getting to know affiliates. They hosted a dinner at Switch at the Encore hotel, with Market Leverage CEO Mike Jenkins in attendance. It was a great opportunity to talk to affiliate managers Mike Kelly and Jen Fluker to get insight into how affiliate managers operate.

At the dinner, Mike announced the launch of Market Leverage’s greenlinks program, which provides links to video-based affiliate training from the ML website interface.

Here’s an earlier Friday Podcast with Market Leverage CEO Mike Jenkins

Jen Goode, better known as JGoode, headed the Affiliate Summit mentors program and did a great job (I believe there were more than 100 mentees in the program). I also had a picture taken with the penguin and nearly kidnapped him. Ah well, maybe next time.

In the meantime, check out the Friday Podcast with Jen talking about Print-On-Demand product strategies

With Jon Fisher AKA AOJon , founder of the WickedFire affiliate marketing forum. I started making these “gang signs” because a number of the “affiliate gangstas” started making them.

Before the panel discussion on Affiliate Strategies for Traffic Generation and Sales Conversion on the first day of the summit with Miles Baker, Geordie Carswell, Nickycakes.

The session went well with positive feedback submitted by the session attendees.

I’ll likely plan and submit a proposal for another panel in the future.

Nicky was recently interviewed by Tracking202’s Wes Mahler. You can check out the interview here.

Here’s my Friday Podcast interviews:

• Miles Baker
• Geordie Carswell
• Nickycakes

With Team Mystery from VH1’s The Pickup Artist season 2. Pickup artist Mystery AKA Erik Von Markovik – we both share the same birthday btw.) and “Hawaii” and Jason Adams.

Soon a crowd gathered:

It was a pleasure to finally meet Todd Crawford in the flesh:

I was trying to do my best impression of a “Todd Talk” impersonation.

what I found was interesting is that his wife has been keeping a record of all the celebrities he’s been mistaken for. And if you met him in the flesh, you might mistake him for a rockstar.

Check out Todd’s Friday Podcast interview on Affiliate Management

Mike Krongel is founder and CEO of the Copeac affiliate network.

It’s been one of the better performing CPA networks on my sites. If you haven’t yet, check them out.

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That’s it for this update.

More to come.

Here is the long answer:

Social media (I would consider this as “blogging and the other stuff that goes with it”) is more than just a tool in my business. Up till now, it is the foundation of my business.

If HTML websites are billboards filled with information waiting for people to stumble upon them and read them, then blogs are like aggressive ticket scalpers running up to you and shouting in-your-face, in a direct manner. (this is a good thing).

And if you’re new to the social traffic, social networking game, here are some pointers:

• Go out and try everything: The best and worst part of social marketing is that it’s usually free to sign up and participate in. (Although if you forget to factor in the value of your time invested, you could be losing out in a great deal of opportunity cost). Heard about LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Plurk, FriendFeed, Friendster, Orkut, Plurk, Hi5, Flickr, Craigslist, YouTube, Twitter? Why not sign up for an account. If you’re concerned about it (and you probably should be), make sure you register your personal name, your business, your brand, and get your related domain or account name before someone else does. Sure, you can go after “social network domain/account name squatters” after the fact, but it’s going to take time and resources to do that, so why not spare yourself the trouble now.
• Learn to specialize: I don’t think it’s worth being a “jack-of-all-trades” and spread yourself across all the social networks and have merely superficial relationships with the people in those communities. Instead, I’d suggest focusing on specializing in one or two social networks and “embedding” yourself in them. Learn the social rituals, get to know the influencers, build YOUR own social influence within those circles. Some wannabe “gurus” would have you believe that your social influence is dictated by the number of followers or friends you have. In my opinion, that is utter nonsense and is at best a simpleton’s scare tactic. Just like wine, it’s quality than counts, not quantity.
• Stay away from the Dark Side: Yes, the medium is a free one, but does that mean you should keep taking away from it (see: How NOT to be a tool on Twitter and How NOT to be a tool on Twitter part 2)? Believe or not, there’s a better course of action, that’s to build your goodwill bank.

Being “successful” with your social marketing efforts has a lot to do with your social influence and ability to shape opinions and behavior. And that’s going to take more than just a simple follower count to resolve.

how not to be a tool on twitter

As an experienced affiliate professional, Missy has built up a reputation in the industry, serving in senior management positions like:

• Director of Public Relations for Media Breakaway LLC (formerly CPA Empire, now known as affiliate.com)
• Vice President of Partnership Marketing for eBound Strategies
• President of Aluria Software
• Vice-President of Marketing for Global Travel International

Some of these positions were concurrent with taking a leading role in launching and growing the Affiliate Summit conference/trade show as well as a number of fundraising intiaitives.

If you’ve had a chance to talk to Missy during one of the trade shows, you’d find that she’s personable and knowledgable. During the course of our discussion, I got to know Missy better, including:

• How she got involved in affiliate marketing
• The formation of the Affiliate Summit and it’s goals and growth over the years
• How she got involved with fundraising activities, concurrently growing her affiliate business
• A preview of upcoming Affiliate Summit conferences and related events
• The guerilla marketing strategies used to promote the summit (merchants and affiliate networks can take a leaf out of Missy and Shawn’s playbook)
• Missy’s video blogging and promotion strategies
• A number of inspirational moments from the recent Affiliate Summit
• Key updates involving projects like Geekcast.fm, a new podcast in the making, Missy’s return to affiliate management and the revamped AffStat affiliate industry survey

Check out the hour long podcast, chock-full of content below:

Resources:

• Missy’s blog
• Missy’s Twitter account
• Affiliate Summit
• FeedFront
• Geekcast.fm
• AffStat (participate in the latest survey. closes Feb 28, 2009)
• Affiliate Marketers Give Back
• WeViews.tv
• ShipToTroops.com

It was worth the 20 hour plane ride each way, and despite the somewhat hefty tax expense, the benefits far outweighed the time and resources to get there.

This is a first in a series of posts, more to come.

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Pre-Affiliate Summit

Getting to the summit is a good idea, especially with some flights being delayed and having a chance to do some chillaxing before the event. I did some shopping at the premium outlets outlet mall and met up that night with Kim Rowley and Jon Levine.

At most conferences and seminars, I usually learn more from talking to other affiliates about their sites and projects, compared to the formal sessions (unless it’s a brand new area/topic for me).

So we went for drinks and it was interesting to hear about how the program that Jon is managing was put together.

–

Day 1: Sun 11 Jan

I was pleasantly suprised outside the conference rooms by Shawn Collins who danced a welcome jig:

I’d post a video, but the group we were with was too ticked to fire up our flip cams.

–

And shortly after, pickup artist Mystery showed up with his entourage and soon a small crowd gathered around him:

I had a chance to check out the “Mysteryplex” AKA “Project Hollywood” mentioned in Neil Strauss’ bestseller “The Game” in Hollywood later in the week. (in a future post).

In many ways, successful pickup has a lot in common with successful affiliate marketing – you need to make the offer attractive, you need to match the approach with your target’s demographic, and you need an attractive “call to action”. The showmanship doesn’t hurt either.

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Later that evening, affiliate network Market Leverage hosted a blogger dinner at Switch at the Encore by Wynn.

(Left to right): David Brim (Izea, back to camera), Market Leverage founder and CEO Michael Jenkins, Ms Danielle, Nate Whitehill (Unique Blog Designs).

Michael also announced the launch of Market Leverage’s Greenlinks – a series of video help videos, at the dinner.

Aside from the great seafood we had, it was also a good opportunity to get insight into Market Leverage’s operations from Mike Kelly (ML’s first affiliate manager) and Jen Fluker (ML’s second affiliate manager).

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Meeting Steph

Undoubtedly, one of the advantages of attending Affiliate Summit is being able to meet networks and get a feel for the affiliate managers you’ll be working with. Meeting them in person also means you have a high chance of being accepted into their network.

I’d been talking to Stephanie Lichtenstein from Andy Rodriguez Consulting over twitter and it was a pleasure to meet her in person. In fact, I swept her off her feet:

Steph, me and Billy Kay Knoblach

Here is a video Steph put up on youtube (it’s received positive feedback from the twitter community)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acybZGnU8sw[/youtube]

Steph’s definitely got an edge when it comes to relationship building with affiliates and social marketers can take a page out of her book.

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Affiliate Triathlon

What I like about the Affiliate Summits is how Shawn and Missy combine fun activities with fund-raising for worthwhile causes. This year’s charity: the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Some of the “competitiors” were dressed to kill too.

ShareASales CEO Brian Littleton in his 80s Miami Vice (LA Gear?) get up

The ladies from the set of Kill Bill 3: Affiliate Ninjas. Or possibly the ShareASale team (Jessica Sander, Sarah Beeskow, Carolyn Tang).

–

Some key takeways:

Video Marketing will continue to be grow this year, with merchants like Buy.com integrating solutions from Qoof and ToldYa! into their affiliate platforms. Buy.com’s Melissa Salas, Qoof’s Michael Stefansky and Market Leverage’s Mike Jenkins gave some good insights during their panel which smart affiliates will be able to utilize in their campaigns.

PPC Pay per click marketing: continues to be a red hot topic with numerous sessions during the seminar track devoted to tracking, optimizing and automating the process. As PPC usage becomes more sophisticated, tools like Wes Mahler’s Tracking202 lower the barrier of entry for new affiliates.

Boutique CPA Networks: A number of “boutique” style CPA networks are rewriting the rules of affiliate marketing. While some affiliate manager are of the “I am here just to tell you the best offers and negotiate payouts for you” mindset, smaller, agile networks like Convert2Media (helmed by Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman) and Ads4Dough (helmed by Jason “Smaxor” Akatiff) are rewriting the rules of what a network is, by going the extra mile to provide guidance to new and experienced affiliates. The fact that the networks are run by top affiliates well versed in white hat and black hat traffic and affiliate tactics also means that they can provide useful and relevant advice.

I spoke to Jim at the sidelines of the affiliate summit, where Jim talked about:

• How he got started in affiliate marketing
• Getting involved in projects like affiliate track
• Managing the affiliate program for an MP3 site which had 1 million paid subscribers and a budget of $500,000 each month for pay per click (PPC) traffic
• How merchants can easily create marketing tools for affiliates
• PPC optimization tips for affiliates
• How you can identify quality affiliate networks and affiliate offers
• How to get approved and accepted for affiliate programs if you are an international affiliate
• Why affiliate managers should not auto-approve affiliate applications
• The launch of the Offeratti affiliate network

Check out the podcast below:

Links:

Offeratti

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.

First the survival element:

• Bring business cards, especially if you’d like to drop your name in the running to win a Wii, Xbox, gift card or other incentive the networks are offering. (also known as “offline lead generation”). If you’re selective, I’d think 30-50 business cards are enough. If you’re aggressively giving them out, leaving them on tables, etc, you’d probably need about 10 boxes (1,000 cards).
• Be warm: The weather is pretty cool at this time of the year, bring a jacket if you’re going out in the evenings
• Prep yourself: Prepare a 30 second pitch of what you do and your type of traffic generation, you’ll likely be repeating yourself walking the show floor, attending sessions, at parties, etc. Save the life story if someone is really interested, else a 15-30 second “elevator pitch/synopsis” will suffice.
• Comfortable shoes are a must: Walking shoes: wear them. Your feet will thank you at the end of the day.
• Hydrate yourself: “Las Vegas Throat” is a condition that strikes some, especially with the dry desert air and occasional shouting you’ll have to do. Drink lots of water (or honey and lemon if you can get ahold of it). Else you risk losing your voice at the end of day 1 or 2.
• Max out your carrying capacity: If you’re planning to collect schwag from every exhibitor, you might want to bring a backpack as you’re walking the halls, else you could be weighed down. I think Market Leverage might be rolling out their Cashinator machine, where you grab dollar bills in a vortex of flying money. Good for a few bucks, better for more laughs.

–

If you’d like to check out the comprehensive list of sessions, check out the Affiliate Summit agenda.

For parties, Jangro’s “Party A Day” Guide.

For some recommends sessions Angel’s Top 5 ASW09 session picks.

Here’s my session and party guide:

Day 1 (Sun Jan 11 2009):

Meet Market (noon till 6pm, location: Pavilion 8-11): A 1-day meet-and-greet session. You’ll think you can breeze through this area in about an hour, but the reality is that it’ll probably be about 3 hours and you’d have barely made it through half the tables. It’s a good opportunity to talk to networks and merchants here. Also a good schwag collecting opportunity.

What’s going to take away from your Meet Marketing time is the workshop sessions which are going on concurrently.

Be sure to check out:

Affiliate Strategies for Traffic Generation and Monetization
Session 1a
Location: Classroom A – Brasilia 1-3
Time: 12:00pm-1:00pm

This is the first session of the workshop series and the one where Miles Baker, NickyCakes, Geordie Carswell and myself will be presenting. It’s intended to be an interesting and useful session for new and experienced affiliates alike. Do stop by.

–

Another session at the same time is:

Advanced Approaches to Affiliate Recruiting, Training & Management
Session 1b
Location: Classroom B – Brasilia 4-7
Time: 12:00pm-1:00pm

Heather Paulson and Geno Prussakov will be presenting this session.

–

Also at this time:

Affiliate Marketing in 2009
Session 1d
Location: Classroom D – Miranda 7-8
Time: 12:00pm-1:00pm

Pepperjam’s Kris Jones, PartnerCentric’s Linda Woods and M3 Mobile Marketing’s Gary Ackerman will be presenting.

—-

In the next time slot:

The Black Ink Session
Session 2c
Location: Classroom C – Miranda 5-6
Time: 1:30pm-2:30pm

Top affiliate Jeremy Palmer will be presenting a case study and if you’ve read his blog or been a member of the BlackInk project, you’ll know that Jeremy consistently overdelivers.

–

Also in the same time slot:

The Ultimate Pitching Guide
Session 2d
Location: Classroom D – Miranda 7-8
Time: 1:30pm-2:30pm

Revenue magazine editor Lisa Picarille, SmallBizTrends editor-in-chief Anita Campbell, Jim Kukral and Help A Reporter’s Peter Shankman will be sharing media strategies.

–

In the next time slot:

Automating Websites and PPC Management
Session 3a
Location: Classroom A – Brasilia 1-3
Time: 3:00pm-4:00pm

Top affiliate John Hasson will be showing a number of automation techniques he uses in his PPC and affiliate campaigns. I had a chance to interview him for the Friday Podcast this week (to be published this Friday) where he talks about putting together a 30,000 keyword campaign using a number of software tools. This’ll be an eye-opening experience for those using PPC.

–

And at the same time…

Ethical Issues in Affiliate Marketing
Session 3d
Location: Classroom D – Miranda 7-8
Time: 3:00pm-4:00pm

Affiliate industry heavyweights like ABestWeb founder Haiko De Poel, ShareASale founder Brian Littleton, FlamingoWorld Connie Berg, OPM AffiliateCrew’s Chuck Hamrick, Ebates’ Paul Nichols will be taking questions relating to ethics in affiliate marketing. With the recent rise of “loyaltyware” or “parasiteware”, and affiliates and merchants seeing their commissions being intercepted/hijacked by some of these affiliates, it’ll make for an interesting session.

–

ShareASale “Under The Stars” Party
Time: 8pm – midnight

A 1980s-themed party. SaS throws great parties and they’ll be giving out tickets at their Meet Market booth on Sunday.

–

Day 2 (Monday, Jan 12)

Opening Remarks & Keynote
Location: General Session Room – Brasillia 1-7
Time: 9:45am – 10:45am

Keynote by Gary Vaynerchuk. I’m sure Gary will have interesting insights on branding and business building.

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Followed by the sessions:

Whitehat Linkbuilding Strategies: Beginner to Advanced
Session 4a
Location: Classroom A – Brasilia 1-3
Time: 11:30am-12:30pm

I’ve heard from Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins that Wil Reynolds consistently draws the highest speaker ratings every year. I’m sure his presentation on SEO and linkbuilding strategies will be a great one.

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In the same timeslot:

Advertising on Facebook
Session 4d
Location: Classroom D – Miranda 7-8
Time: 11:30am-12:30pm

This panel discussion will be an interesting one with a Facebook internet marketing team lead Alex Schultz, Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker, Zac Johnson and Ravenwood Marketing’s Dan Murray on the panel.

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Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?
Session 5d
Location: Classroom D – Miranda 7-8
Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm

This was a great session at ASW08 with AskABuilder’s Tim Carter, a MetaCafe rep, Gary V and Buy.com’s Affiliate Marketing Director Melissa Salas in attendance. This time round, it’ll be Melissa, Market Leverage founder Michael Jenkins in attendance.

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Day 3 (Tues 13 Jan 2009)

Super Affiliate PPC Marketing Strategies
Session 7c
Location: Classroom C – Miranda 5-6
Time: 11:30am-12:30pm

Amit Mehta, Ros Gardner and Colin McDougall will be among the 3 PPC affiliates at this session. If it’s anything like the previous sessions, expect a full house.

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The Art of Keyword Blasting
Session9c
Location: Classroom C – Miranda 5-6
Time: 3:15pm-4:15pm

PPC affiliates will find Ian Fernando’s session useful for ideas in kickstarting your PPC campaigns.

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It’s likely that other affiliate networks will host their own parties, so check with your affiliate manager for info. Also WebmasterRadio has hosted “Affiliate Bash” a couple of times, so watch for those too.

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See you at the Affiliate Summit!

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.

During the session, we talked about:

• How he got started in internet marketing, especially working 3 jobs at the time
• Some of the discoveries and lessons learned as he got started in affiliate marketing
• Ian is one of the few marketers who blogs publicly about media buying and Pay-Per-View strategies
• Which PPV networks you should take a look at
• Tips to optimize your PPV campaigns
• How to select appropriate affiliate offers for PPV campaigns
• His newest project Affpinions
• A preview of his upcoming session next week at the Affiliate Summit on “Keyword Blasting”

Check out the podcast below:

Resources:

• Ian’s Blog
• Ian’s Twitter account
• Affpinions

If you’re an affiliate signed up to multiple networks, you’d receive a constant barrage of daily emails with subject lines like “network exclusives, promote now!”, “Highest payouts!” and “Hot new offers”.

Likewise, I’ve checked out a couple of affiliate marketing forums where networks have sponsored sections of the forums and populated these sections with “These offers are hot!” then proceed to list down payouts and offer caps.

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I don’t know how you feel, but this is pretty much tantamount to email and social network spamming by overzealous affiliate managers.

A good affiliate manager should know when to promote offers and when to back off. And emailing/hounding me when I say I’m busy is one way to get on my really bad side.

The other thing that’s disturbing is how little time many affiliate managers take to understand their affiliates. Granted, each AM might have 500 affiliates under them with just 5-10% of them actively promoting campaigns.

But my thought is this – If you’re already investing a couple of minutes using an instant messenger or making a phone call to the affiliate: what’s the best way to use this time?

Should you:

1) TELL the affiliate about your best converting offer, and the exclusives and the highest payouts. (I doubt an affiliate running a credit repair website might be able to clear many acaiberry lead gen offers for you…)

OR

2) Should you ASK the affiliate what type of offers they’re interested in, and filter your pool of offers down to the most relevant 10-20 and email that information over?

The concept of customer relationship management (CRM) does not apply only to the advertiser-affiliate network relationship because the advertiser is paying for the leads/customers, I’d say that affiliates are equal part “customers” in the equation too.

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Having said that, using Twitter, or a blog to publish an endless stream of breaking news on “offer updates” is just another way of doing what everyone else is doing.

Here are a couple of ways to disrupt the “traditional” way of affiliate management, and stepping the standards up a notch:

Engage with affiliates: This is more than just sending me a Christmas card (even if I live halfway around the world), it’s engaging and understanding your affiliates’ requirements.

Geordie Carswell, back when he was CEO of affiliate network Revenuewire, would be available over AIM to give PPC campaign tips and promotion ideas. Likewise, Mike Krongel, CEO of Intermark Media which owns the Copeac network would be available too.

These days, Ralph Ruckman AKA “Ruck” is active on the Wickedfire forum and actively posts on the Convert2Media blog and gives out promotion ideas on the C2M affiliate forum with clear, actionable ideas to promote the offers on his network. Not to mention that his partner and co-founder Steve Howe practically lives on AIM.

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Building A Goodwill Virus: I hadn’t heard of Market Leverage till meeting some of their team at the Affiliate Summit last year. Since then, they’re proactively got my mailing address from my domain whois information and sent me a schwag bag earlier this year (and included some gifts for my daughter too).

Likewise, they’ve been following on their promotion efforts by organizing a series of contests on the popular blogs and rollout their “Cashinator” money grabbing machine thingie at events they’re taking part in. While these items and cash won’t be significant for successful affiliates, it does demonstrate that affiliates are a priority for the network and building credibility and a reputation among the affiliate community are some of its goals.

Also, having a regular video broadcast does help build the reputation of the affiliate network (or merchant). Market Leverage has it’s Market Leverage TV weekly broadcast, while Buy.com has it’s Buy.tv broadcasts.

If anything these intiatives demonstrates the networks or merchant’s investment in long-term projects which will ultimately bear fruit from its core of affiliates.

Taking some of lessons to mind when attending an event like Affiliate Summit will help any network get more mileage out of their participation in the event.

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Related podcasts:

• Mike Jenkins, founder Market Leverage
• Geordie Carswell, former CEO Revenuewire
• Dina Riccobono, Market Leverage marketing manager

And the inertia of business and projects has kept my intended blogroll update moving forward for a couple of months (yes, months).

If you’re headed to the Affiliate Summit next month, do drop a note in the comments below and be sure to say “hi” especially if we meet up at one of the parties or at the booths.

Here’re some of my old friends and new friends I’ve made in the last year (and recently added to the blogroll).

Miles Baker: A work-at-home dad who’s tried just about everything on the internet, Miles is a successful affiliate who’s built a healthy number of profitable sites. He’s one of the panelists at the affiliate panel on the first day of the Affiliate Summit.

Check out Miles’ appearance on my Friday Podcast.

Miles’ Twitter account

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NickyCakes: Nick calls himself a “reformed blackhat” whose main focus is on pay per click-based affiliate marketing. He’s posted a number of innovative affiliate strategies on his blog (in between pointing out perceived pretentiousness among certain affiliates). Nick will also be one of the panelists on the affiliate panel at 1230pm on the first day of the summit.

Nick’s previous appearance on the Friday Podcast.

Nick’s Twitter account

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Geordie Carswell: Geordie’s the 3rd and final member of the affiliate panel. Though he doesn’t actively blog, he’s focused on building his new outfit, Diversion Marketing. Although he’s quite accomplished at PPC, he’s since started work on a couple of different projects and I might have him on a future episode of the Friday Podcast.

In the meantime, you can check out his previous appearance on the Friday Podcast where he talked about affiliate success strategies.

Geordie’s twitter account

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Chad Frederiksen: Better known as “CDF Networks”, Chad has the distinction of being one of the top 10 AzoogleAds affiliates early on. PPC is his forte and he shared a number of strategies during his time on the Friday Podcast.

Chad’s twitter account.

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John Hasson: John has a background as a programmer and has developed and sold his own software prior to becoming an affiliate. He’ll be presenting a session on automating your PPC campaigns at the Affiliate Summit. Meanwhile, you can check out his appearance on the Friday Podcast.

John’s Twitter account

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Kris Trujillo: Having taken over the CashTactics blog from founder Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman, Kris has a number of ongoing internet marketing projects, in addition to his search engine optimization (SEO) consulting services. He appeared on the Friday Podcast to talk about build a search engine-based business.

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Andrew Payne: Also blogging at CashTactics, Andrew is a PPC marketer and he has recently authored a PPC case study covering the fundamentals of niche selection and setting up your campaign. He also provided bonus material during the Friday Podcast.

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Todd Crawford: Todd is one of the co-founders of the Commission Junction affiliate network in 1998 and is currently working on his “secret project”. In the meantime, he posts pictures and comments about watches, t-shirts and other gizmos he’s either bought, is trying out or is in the process of buying, I guess his ToddTalks site is like a shopping blog for geeks? Check out his thoughts on affiliate management on the Friday Podcast.

Todd will be moderating a session on combating fraud in affiliate marketing at the Affiliate Summit.

Todd’s Twitter account.

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Joel Comm: Back when I first got started in internet marketing, Joel’s “Adsense Code” book was one of the first I’d read. I’m currently going through his “Click Here To Order” book which is a great narrative about the key players in internet marketing got their start and built their businesses. I met Joel in Vegas and he’ll be presenting a session on mobile marketing (direct marketing to cellphones) at the summit.

Joel’s twitter account

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If you’re interested in afttending the Affiliate Summit, it’s at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas from Jan 11-13.

Click here to book a place

Discount code: ASW09WHOISAW to save 10% off any type of pass

For a media pass, visit this link.

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.

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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.