One of the smartest Internet Marketers I’ve met in my journey thus far, has to be Rachel Rofe.
I first met Rachel on the Warrior Forum when I purchased her WSO (Warrior Special Offer). For a new Internet Marketer then, she certainly put out a great product on niche research, keyword strategies and putting your marketing campaign together.
A Drexel/UPenn grad, she’s also a member of the Phi Eta Sigma honor society, so I guess you might say we’re fellow “nerds”.
But then again, I think she’s a tough chick (can I say that?), having made a looong road trip from Philadelphia to LA to pursue her Internet Marketing goals.
She already has a successful membership site under her belt, YayFood – a caloric cycling/weight loss/weight management community – which has been featured in Women’s World magazine.
Although I’ve not met her yet, I have an intuition that she’s pretty hyper – going by her blog postings, and her penchant for T Harv Eker’s seminars and workshops.
She’s currently hanging out in LA, leading the Sex and the City Lifestyle (set in LA, rather than Manhattan) – getting hit on by Cuba Gooding Jr. (We’re still waiting for that follow up post, Rach…)
Mark Wielgus, or just “Mark” from 45n5.com (right) is one of those marketers whom you sit up and take notice of.
I found his site when he first launched his eBay-Amazon-Youtube mashup script, which lets you build an affiliate site easily. Mark has already done the API (application programming interface) work for you, so you can skip around the techie aspects and get round to the business of generating affiliate commissions.
He followed that up with his 19pages.com application, which lets you build a niche site easily, and the best thing about it doesn’t require a MySQL connection, so you can transport it from one webhosting account to another easily. If you’re into site development/site flipping, it can be a handy tool to add value to a site (and increase it’s monetization and asking price too).
He’s since gone on to launch his Top100 “make money online” blog rankings (he developed the code) and it’s generated a fair amount of buzz in the internet marketing blogosphere.
So naturally I had to have him on the Friday Podcast to pick his brains about developing software applications to boost your internet marketing efforts and to directly monetize.
We talked about the building blocks of application development, as well as monetizing your application once it’s good to go.
You can hear our thorough discussion (weighing in at more than an hour long) and hear about his latest project ShowYourAdHere.com in the latest edition of the Friday Podcast accessible below:
In addition to producing my own Friday Podcast series, a major source of information for me is listening to audio programs and podcasts.
I probably spend about 1-2 hours each day driving and where I used to listen to music, then later switched to listening to news programs like the BBC, I’ve since switched to listening to podcasts a couple of months ago.
Why listen to podcasts? I personally would absorb more information out of a book, especially since I like to mark them up, but a podcast is a good way to multi-task, especially if you’re short on time and a great way to find something to do while you’re driving, exercising (I’m shooting for at least 2 hours of exercise a week to fight the flab), or while cleaning my desk or doing paperwork.
My personal preference is to go for programs with useful content, although I do like the occasional “talk radio” style podcast with hosts who are doing a “Seinfeld” (ie a podcast about nothing…) but generally that doesn’t take up more than 5% or 10% of my listening time.
If a podcast contains very good information, I’ll make a mental note to go through it again and take down notes.
Here’re some of the podcasts which I listen to and (more…)
On the sidelines of PPC Classroom Live in Vegas last month, I got a chance to talk to affiliate industry veteran Rachel Honoway.
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 Partnership’s KowaBunga! and PrimaryAds Networks.
You will meet so many people at one point that it will seem like a blur and it’s only after going through the business cards that you’ll recall who you met.
So if you would like to meet and talk to someone during the summit, it’d be a good idea to either:
Private message them on their Facebook profile
Contact them using the contact form on their blog
Attend the session they’ll be speaking at.
Head to one of the smaller events like Affiliate Classroom Live, Gospel Brunch, the Affiliate Dinner
Arrange to meet at one of the parties and try to find each other from the hundreds of people there…
Else, it could be a hit-and-miss affair, especially with more than 2,500 people registered for the event.
On the lighter side of things, Heather Paulson (right) has issued a challenge to a group of prominent affiliate marketers and managers that could be one of the highlights of 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.
One of the smartest Internet Marketers I’ve met in my journey thus far, has to be Rachel Rofe.
Mark Wielgus, or just “Mark” from 45n5.com (right) is one of those marketers whom you sit up and take notice of.
On the lighter side of things, Heather Paulson (right) has issued a challenge to a group of prominent affiliate marketers and managers that could be one of the highlights of Affiliate Summit West.