If you missed it, check out: Affiliate Summit West 2009 in Pics and Words (Part 1).

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 (more…)

• affiliate marketing, Internet Marketing
• 127 Comments

I’ve been tagged by Pepperjam Affiliate Marketing Director Robyn Martin (and soon to be Mrs Kris Jones) in the latest incarnation of the “8 things about me” meme. Instead of telling you more things beyond what’s already in my bio, I’d like to focus on 8 things I’ve learned about affiliate marketing.

Here are the tag rules:

Here are the tag rules:

• Each player must post these rules first.
• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write about their eight facts on their blog.
• At the end of your blog post, choose eight people to get tagged, list their names, and link to them.
• Don’t forget to contact them telling them they’re tagged. Also, point them to your blog post so they know what to do.

Here’re the my 8 “facts”:

1. Payouts don’t tell the entire story. If an offer doesn’t convert, even at $150 a lead, it doesn’t do you any good.
2. The Affiliate marketing big guns are using PPC (PayPerClick) traffic to drive traffic in great volume to their sites. Check out Gauder Chaudry’s PayPerClickFormula and blogs from PPC Super Affiliates like Shoemoney, Amit Mehta, Kris Jones and Geordie Carswell, Andrew Johnson, Shawn Collins’ Affiliate Tip and Aojon’s Affiliate Marketing Blog among others if you want to gain the competitive edge.
3. Knowledge is going to be your biggest weapon and who you know is going to be a big part of it. I like visiting and more importantly, contributing to forums like the WickedFire Affiliate Marketing and 5Star Affiliate Marketing Forum. Once I get a number of projects off the ground, I plan to get more involved in ABestWeb. If you haven’t listened to ABestWeb founder Haiko De Poel’s “Affiliate Marketing Today” podcasts on WebmasterRadio from back in 2004 and 2005, you’re missing out.
4. Join a quality CPA network. Do your homework, check network reputations with other super affiliates. Make sure you have a great affiliate manager supporting you. Besides giving you marketing tips, they can help bump your commissions once you start generating quality leads. I like Copeac (Danielle Iovino), AzoogleAds (Erin Hughes) and MaxBounty (Jessica Dagg). [If you join as part of my affiliate network through my links. Drop me an email and I’ll help you get started].
5. Internet Marketing is more about “Marketing” than merely the “Internet”/tech side of things. You need to be able to establish rapport, build relationships with merchants, affiliate networks and fellow affiliates. If you’re a prima donna, you get relegated to the “has beens” once your numbers drop. Build bridges, create connections to key players in your market. Do whatever you said you’d promise to do. [Many marketers fail on this point…]
6. Constantly add value in whatever you do. If you’re looking for the quick fix, or a shortcut to bumping your affiliate revenue, you can probably game one of the sites out there and get a blip on your commissions for the month, but it’s not likely to be long term. Focus on building a long term business and it’ll continue bringing you income even when you’re not tending to it (which was the original intent of starting a business, wasn’t it?)

Ok, I better add 2 personal “bits” to (more…)

• internet memes
• 9 Comments

In about a week’s time, the folks over at WebmasterRadio, affiliate network Copeac and the WickedFire affiliate marketing forum affiliate marketing forum, look set to hold the AffiliateBash, a party held in sizzling Miami that is set to blister off the charts.

Another major sponsor is affiliate network RocketProfit.

And the party will be held at the Mansion on Miami Beach.

So you can expect to see the folks like WebmasterRadio, WickedFire leader Aojon and the WickedFire crew, together with DigitalMoses Confidential, PepperJam, Options Media, Moniker and FriendFinder.

PepperJam is doing a promotion for their VIP list, check out the post here.

If you’re there, do be sure to say hi to Copeac president Mike Krongel and lead affiliate manager Danielle Iovino. I’ve learned more than my fair share of guerilla affiliate marketing tactics from Mike over the last few months and he’s always ready to share his experiences. Danielle’s one of the best affiliate managers I’ve met among the different CPA networks out there.

Be sure to pick the brains of PepperJam head honcho Kris Jones and Affiliate marketing director Robyn Martin.

Aojon has informed me over IM that he plans to do a number of unspeakable things at the party and it wouldn’t be prudent to reproduce them here.

Much as I’d like to, I won’t be making the trip down to Miami, although I’ve already told my wife that nothing is going to keep me from Affiliate Summit West at the Rio in Vegas in February next year.

If you’re headed to Affiliate Summit, and you miss the Affiliate Bash, you could be kicking yourself for some time to come.

If you haven’t already figured it out yet, the bulk of the power networking and exchange of affiliate marketing and CPA campaign information takes places at these events (especially after a few drinks).

Speaking of which, the other big party coming up is the Rich Jerk’s Playboy (more…)

• affiliate marketing
• 5 Comments

I just touched down in Singapore earlier today and although the 14 hour time difference is causing major havoc to my body clock, I figured this is the perfect opportunity to reflect on Affiliate Summit West and the takeaways from having flown 20+ hours around the world to attend.

Thanks to Shawn Collins and Missy Ward who conceptualized Affiliate Summit and have been grown it from strength-to-strength at about 200 participants in the first AS in 2003 till more than 2,000 at the recently concluded ASW.

It was a great opportunity to meet up face-to-face with a number of the online marketers I’d been reading and talking with over the past few months like ShoeMoney, Scott Jangro, Kris Jones, PlanetAndrea, Jon Fisher from WickedFire and Joe Whyte.

Becky “Webmoxy” Ryan was a friendly and intelligent person to talk to (even though I was deep in thought and seemed to have unintentionally ignored her when she called out a few times).

Maura, Robyn, Andrew Wee at the Pepperjam booth

Shoemoney’s assistant Nicole

Webmoxy Becky Ryan

More surprising still was the fact that (more…)

• Internet Marketing events
• 10 Comments

It’s about 16 hours before I head off on my long flight to Affiliate Summit West.

I’ve been talking to the WickedFire folks and we’re psyched about meeting up.

I’ve planned out my itinery and will likely be spending more time networking and attending sessions, compared to drinking and clubbing.

There are a number of networking parties including one hosted by oneNetworkDirect and Wynn Las Vegas at Wynns’ TRYST nightclub which features a private lagoon. If there’s one phobia I have, it’s dancing in public.

We’ll see how this pans out.

Besides visiting the exhibit halls, I’m planning to (more…)

• Internet Marketing events
• 8 Comments

WickedFire founder Jon F just announced the beta launch of the affiliate marketing forums’ resource areas earlier today.

WickedFire is virtual home to several experienced affiliate marketers (as evidenced by threads like “Post Your Stats“, including a purported $16 million buyout offer for the 8 month old forum.

As of today, the forum is rated at PR4, Alexa 1,879
Jon, famous (or depending on your point of view, infamous) for posting $80,000 screenshots of his earnings on SitePoint, had announced on his blog that he’d be stepping down from affiliate marketing earlier this month. (The End Of An Era – Jon Resigns From Affiliate Marketing As An Affiliate)

WickedFire looks set to eventually to become a community portal and information resource site for affiliate marketers.

It looks set to leverage on the (more…)

• affiliate marketing
• 3 Comments