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 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 conform to the meme.

• I grew up mostly in Singapore, which is a small diamond-shaped island about 30 miles long and 50 miles wide. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not in China, but rather in the proximity of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Singapore was a British colony in the 19th and early 20th century, so our education system is British-based. Planet Andrea AKA Andrea Schoemaker remarked that I spoke like Austin Powers the first time she met me.
• I like country cooking. There’s nothing better than biscuits and gravy, grits, hashbrowns, farmers sausage and Texas BBQ for me. [I head over to the local IHOP and Waffle House for some chocolate pancakes whenever I’m in the US]. Mudpies and Cold Stone Creamery ice-cream rank up there too.

The meme stipulates tagging 8 (yes, that’s EIGHT) people to propagate the meme further, though I’ve noticed that most folks have been tagging 4…

My tags go out to:

• Reformed Black Hat Marketer Howie Schwartz
• PPC Super Affiliate Geordie Carswell
• Content Guru Matt Sherborne
• MyBlogLog Community Manager and Fellow Blogger SleepyBlogger Robyn Tippins
• Instigator Blogger Ben Yoskovitz
• Traffic King Ross Goldberg
• Internet Marketer Rachel Rofe
• 5Star Affiliate Linda Buquet

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 Mansion Party at Playboy Mansion West, Beverly Hills.

Hef and the Gals

There’s a bit of controversy from some Internet Marketers about boycotting the event as it seem to be promoting immorality or …I’m not entirely clear why they’re against it. [Read Tim Erway and Ross Goldberg’s posts]. I can understand what their detractors are saying, but I don’t really follow their line of logic.

If I had to make a choice between the two events, it would be a little difficulty, but I’d have to say my choice would firmly rest with Shawn Collins and Missy Ward’s Affiliate Summit and the accompanying WMR/Copeac Affiliate Bash.

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 a number of affiliate managers and affiliates whom I hadn’t met prior to ASW mentioned they enjoyed reading this blog.

Blogging can be a solitary affair and it’s comforting to have face-to-face validation (which gives a human face to the otherwise clinical awstats’ 6000+ monthly uniques).

Although I missed them, perhaps I’ll have a chance to catch up with Super Affiliate Ros Gardner, BlogKits founder Jim Kukral, Sam Harrelson and SleepyBlogger Robyn Tippins at the next event. I heard Neil Patel and Cameron Olthuis had to leave Sunday evening for school, so I probably missed them by a hair.

What I greatly appreciated was the opportunity to meet Mike Krongel and his team over at Copeac. They threw a killer party for the WickedFire folks over at the Caramel Loung in the Bellagio.

It’s a great opportunity to have met up with WickedFire founders Jon and Brandon and WF members like John “I like c**k”, SEO_Mike, chrislingle, lerchmo, jDog, DruSam, Surly, Kaveman, Smaxor, Jon Warass, ExEngima, Rick.

Mike Peters from Software Projects had some interesting stories to tell too.

I’ve been listening to some of the post-ASW buzz and one of the issues I’ve heard is that the workshops didn’t provide good information.

I think the major element of a ‘summit’ is to share ideas. And given the time constraint of a 1.5 hour session, I’d doubt it’s fair to compare AS’ workshop sessions with Elite Retreat or other multiple day workshop focused on a single topic like SEO or list building.

I had the opportunity to speak to merchants making their first foray into affiliate marketing and they seemed to have got basic information to follow up on their efforts.

The biggest benefit of ASW is ‘being there’.

And ShoeMoney has rightly pointed out that the best exchange of ideas takes place after the workshop, in the bars and restaurants after the sessions end. In a more relaxed environment, you have an open exchange of ideas and trading information on what works and what doesn’t.

And herein lies the rub, Internet Marketing has more to do with relationship building and personal contact, than just the technology aspect that people generally get obsessed about.

Online marketing is more than composing the best Web copy, or optimizing your landing page or PPC campaign.

If you don’t have grassroot supports from your peers, whether it’s getting feedback on something you’re implementing, or even working together on a project, you can still succeed, it will just take a much longer time.

You can, of course, read about ASW and other events from this blog, though in the long run you’d be missing out on some great networking opportunities.

Affiliate Summit East will be coming up later this year.

Will you be there?

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 attend the following sessions:

Day 1 (Jan 21, Sunday)

• Exhibit hall from the time I arrive (likely about 5pm)
• Ice Breakers Networking session (7pm to 9pm, venue: Platinium)

And the WF folks have arranged a football event with the XY7.com Affiliate Management folks.

Day 2 (Jan 22, Monday)

• WF Breakfast (9am, Bally’s)
• Marketing Your Affiliate Site – Outside the Box (Scott Hazard, Cooperative Affiliates Inc, 1130am – 1230pm, Classroom #B Silver)
• Optimizing with Your Merchant Partner (Jake Bailey, Overstock.com, 2pm – 3pm, Classroom #B Silver)
• Ask the Experts: Super Affiliates (Jon F (WickedFire), Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney), Andrew Johnson (Web Publishing Blog) (330 pm – 430 pm, Classroom #B Silver)

Day 3 (23 Jan, Tuesday)

• Rotating Roundtables: A series of 10-minute “speed dating” style table rotations with table speakers on topics like email marketing, affiliate strategies, search engine reputation monitoring and lead generation (945 am – 11 am, Platinum)
• Bloggers – The New Super Affiliates – Jim Kukral, BlogKits (1130 am – 1230pm, Classroom #B Silver)
• Optimizing Landing Pages – Choots Humphries (LinkConnector Corporation), Mark Widawer (Landing Page Cash Machines) (2 pm – 3 pm, Classroom #C Bronze 1 and 2)
• The Confluence of Search and Affiliate Marketing – Kris Jones (Pepperjam) (330 pm – 430pm Classroom #B Silver)

I’m looking forward to Shoemoney, Jon’s WF, Jim Kukral and Kris Jones’ presentation.

With 1,700 participants, it might be a challenge, but I’ll be keeping a eye out for PlanetAndrea, Ros Gardner, Scott Jangro, Robyn “SleepyBlogger” Tippins, Sam Harrelson, Becky “WebMoxy” Ryan, Joe Whyte and the LunarPages ninjas.

I’d like to meet you if you’re headed to ASW, stop me and say hi if you see me!

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 hands-on experience of members and affiliate managers by giving the ability to rate affiliate networks (and possibly individual programs) in real time.

Going beyond just affiliate marketing, WickedFire aims to encompass products and services affiliate marketers will typically use, including hosts, domain registrars, design firms, programming firms and content writers among others.

First off the line will be a directory, where members can relate their experience with an affiliate network, with the network given the right of response to reply to the feedback.

The WF Resources team, comprising Jon, Brandon and Ben, have worked hard to include two interesting elements into the project:

• Trust and Credibility

If successful, this will be one of the better implementations of the “Reputation” I’ve seen on a vBulletin forum.

From what’s being said, you’d need to achieve a certain access level before being able to access some of WF’s advanced features.

It’s certainly good impetus to create quality content and be likewise rewarded by your peers with reputation points.

Creating quality content sometimes boils down to doing some research on the web and perhaps wikipedia, synergizing the information into something useful and practical and posting the information online.

• Free

Given that what Jon and the WF gang proposes to provide is equivalent to what others might charge upwards of $50 to a few hundred dollars a month for free for affiliates (revenue will be generated from advertising dollars), the initiative certainly has the potential to become a major hub for affiliate marketers.

WF’s Resource Area Beta launch is expected to be anytime from tomorrow to Sunday.

Jon will also be presenting at a session at Affiliate Summit West.

For more information, check out: WickedFire Resource Area – Beta (Contains some strong language)

Jon got the attention of the community when he posted $80k+ screenshots of his earnings at the SitePoint forums.

So it was a little of a shock to see him announce: The End Of An Era – Jon Resigns From Affiliate Marketing As An Affiliate.

But then again, it wasn’t all that surprising, considering most Super Affiliates like Ewen Chia, Ros Gardner and co. eventually shift to creating their own products or launching a new business.

The leverage of having planned and operating an affiliate campaign for another product creator, giving them invaluable insight in managing their own army of affiliates.

For someone in his “mid-20s” and racking up 12 years of affiliate marketing experience, I can see where he’d move in the direction of his own venture. As he mentions:

As some of you have heard, we are making our own sites, with our own merchant accounts, our own content, and our own private (beta until July) affiliate program.

—

The details of the new venture aren’t out yet, though I’m sure known Jon and the WF team, it’ll be something off the beaten track and will send more than a few ripples through the industry.

Will there be some interesting questions coming up during Jon and Shoemoney’s session at Affiliate Summit West?

You bet.

• SEO/SEM

Shoemoney put out a tasty post and buzzed industry contacts with the hypothetical “Would you hire Matt Cutts? If you had to come up with a dollar figure to offer him what would it be? What would his job title and job description be?”

A number of informative and insightful responses from the likes of Kris Jones (CEO PepperJamSearch), Patrick Gavin (CEO Text Link Ads), Greg Hartnett (Best Of The Web), Christine Kim, Rand Fishkin (Owner SEOMOZ), Jason Calacanis (Former CEO Weblogs INC & AOL Exec), Neil Patel – CEO ACS Web Consulting, Danny Sullivan, Aaron Wall – SEOBook

Here’s the link: Would You Hire Matt Cutts?

—

• Blogging

Robyn Tippins looks at the backlash from the bloggers perspective from the proposed acquistion of Performancing’s assets by PayPerPost (as mentioned earlier PerPerPost Acquires Performancing Assets). The PPP and Performancing deal nixed? Good thing or bad thing?

Here’s the link: Pay Per Post and Performancing Deal Nixed
—

• Affiliate Marketing

Has Click Fraud been blown out of proportion? Jon F gives his perspective and gives his fix to the solution. The fact that he filed his post under “Industry Bullshit” will give an indication of his straight up, in your face perspective on the issue. (I’m looking forward to checking out his session together with Shoemoney at Affiliate Summit West)

Here’s the link: Click Fraud – The Overrated Internet Killer

—

• Social Traffic

Social Marketer Michelle MacPhearson is back. Having given birth to a beautiful son, Colum, expect more social traffic tips from Michelle this year. I learned quite a bit from her about social traffic generation last year and will be expecting more good things from her this year.

Here’s the link: 1 Day Old

It looks like Scott Jango might be on to starting something viral with his post: Have You Got An Affiliate Marketing Blog?

As you’re expect, the big guns of Affiliate Marketing: Ros Gardner, Shoemoney, Linda Buquet, Shawn Collins, Kris Jones, are already on the list, though I’d expect it’s just a matter of time before the likes of Ewen Chia, PlanetAndrea and Jon F appear too.

I’m lucky I didn’t do a trackback to these guys. It would’ve been pretty cheap…
Who knows, I might’ve fired a backlink at Chris Hooley, GrayWolf, Neil Patel, or even one of those crazy guys like TofuMonkey.

Who knows what might’ve happened next?

Oops.

Oh gosh.

Oh well.

I’d have shot the link into the Affiliate Marketing TickMe group (with 67 members. Yes, you need to be a member to see the group. And yes, I spawned the group). But Dave Naylor hasn’t implemented a forum/bulletin board function yet, so I can’t easily announce it to the group members.

Yes, go ahead and petition give feedback to DaveN in the comments area at: TickMe – New Social Networking Site

PS: If you feel that I’ve succeeded in creating the LinkBait Post of the Year, please let me know in the comments below.

If you don’t feel so, it only means I’ve failed.

PPS: Here’s Scott Jangro’s Affiliate Blog Directory

I’ll be heading to the US for this event which’ll be useful to bring my affiliate marketing skills to a new level.

Highlights for the event include topics such as:

• Marketing Your Affiliate Site – Outside of the Box
• How to Recruit Super Affiliates
• Optimizing with Your Merchant Partner
• The Current State of Online Lead Generation
• Anatomy of a Viral Video — Maximum ROI
• Search Affiliates: Partners or Parasites?
• Optimizing Landing Pages
• Next Generation Affiliate Recruitment – Why What You Know Doesn’t Work Anymore
• Panel: Lead Generation the New Kids On the Block

What I’m looking forward to though are three sessions:

• Bloggers – The New Super Affiliates (Super affiliates today are essentially the webmasters from 5-10 years ago. Bloggers are the next wave of super content producers, soon to be turned super affiliates; this session will discuss what affiliate managers can do with them.)
• What is Your Affiliate Management IQ? (Anik Singal, CEO, Affiliate Classroom, Inc.)
• Ask the Experts: Super Affiliates (This will is expected to be crazy because super affiliates Jon F (aojon.com and wickedfire.com) and Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker (shoemoney.com and shomemoneymedia.com) will be on the panel)

Oh, and Andrea wanted me to mention that I am excited to finally meet the infamous, beautiful and talented PlanetAndrea. (I think that’s all the adjectives she wanted me to include).

Will you be headed to Affiliate Summit West?

Update: Here’s the link for ASW’s signup

–> Affiliate Summit West