Brian Clark has also stepped in with the legal perspective on what’s kosher and what’s not, when it comes to “word of mouth marketing” AKA social media.

So taking a look at social media for a moment, the medium is very personality-based – we follow individuals (or maybe Britney Spears’ manager firing out tweets on her behalf), and hence there’s greater inferred trust in the communication. This means that when someone is promoting/recommending something, you’re more likely to trust/believe them.

By embedding third party links for products or services you might not be familiar with, and are receving a kickback/commission/payout from, you’re essentially selling your goodwill, for a couple of bucks at best.

Even if you don’t buy the whole “polluting the internet” social argument by participating in this process, you should take a look at it from business and profit perspective.

If you’re buring your credibility promoting potentially second-rate products, you’ll be associated with these class of products. Soon, your followers will realize, you’re at best a promoter of iffy, if not inferior products…and they’ll take their business elsewhere.

In that light, isn’t it better to choose to promote only products you personally use or believe in?

–

When it comes to disclosure, I likewise think it’s pretty silly to label your links with (aff) or [AFF]. What’s the point?

I’ve not stepped into a store and seen price tags labelled with a “We may earn a profit from your purchase” disclaimer on it.

When it comes to the net, it’s safe to assume that someone is earning something off your purchase. Even if it’s a donation to a charity via it’s website, the payment processor is still earning a couple of cents processing the transaction.

–

Now that we have that out of the way, can we work towards something that makes sense and doesn’t involve ugly, huge disclaimers plastered all over affiliate-run sites?

With that, here are the women of the Affiliate Summit:

Justine Ezarik is a lifecasting star who vlogs over at iJustine.tv. She spoke at the social marketing session with Sam Harrelson, Stephanie Agresta, Debbie Schultz and Tris Hussey sitting on the panel.

Schaaf Consulting’s Stephanie Harris spoke at the Anik Singal’s AC Certified workshop the day before Affiliate Summit.

Buy.com‘s Melissa Salas chaired the video marketing panel and also received the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award for Affiliate Manager of the Year award. She’s done some great work with Buy.tv.

Irene Rojas is an affiliate manager with the OfferHive affiliate network based out of florida. Met her at the Affiliate Bash and she is friendly.

Carolyn Tang: I’ve talked to her on ABW and on Facebook and it was great to meet her at the summit. Carolyn’s probably the second most public face of ShareASale after ski fanatic and founder Brian Littleton. Although we didn’t have a chance to talk a whole lot, it was great to meet Carolyn and a number of the SAS merchants at the Affiliate Meet Market and the trade show.

Laura Alter, Lauren and Andrea Schoemaker

WickedFire regulars Laura Alter of Notebook Forums, Lauren AKA Turbolapp and my homie Andrea from PlanetAndrea…who’s been one of my buddies and supporters since I began.

Samantha Brachat: Sam over at NeverBlueAds has been a great affiliate manager and we did a podcast on seasonality and getting started in affiliate marketing. (Samantha Brachat Friday Podcast)

Heather Paulson:
We’ve exchanged emails and talked on the forums. I caught her presentation at the Affiliate Classroom Live workshop and it was a great opportunity to meet and talk to an experienced OPM and PPC manager like Heather at SAS’ Party Under the Stars. Check out the Paulson Management Group.

Danielle Nagami AKA MsDanielle
It’s always a great opportunity to meet people behind the blogs and meeting MsDanielle was no different. We were talking at the John Chow BBQ pig out the last day of the conference and I even got to carry her box around…

Robyn Jones
The former Ms Robyn Martin and now Mrs Kris Jones, always looking fab. Check out the PepperjamNetwork.

Rachel Honoway: Affiliate marketing veteran Rachel (who’s driving the AC Certified program) and I had some fun with the moving bed in the suite during the ShareASale party…but it’s really not what you think! If you haven’t yet, check out this edition of the Friday Podcast we did earlier. (Rachel Honoway Friday Podcast)

Julia Stead: We’ve talked on Linda Buquet’s 5Star Affiliate Marketing forum and I was surprised at how short she was.

Well, actually she’s like over 6′ and used to play basketball. We actually had got some footage of her and fellow ShareResults affiliate manager Jamie Fortunaso dancing on the couches at Tao during the Affiliate Bash, but the footage didn’t come out…

Ah well…ASE Boston I guess.

Debby Banning: Building trust and credibility is important in building your network and I first “met” Debby when she added me as a friend on Facebook. I checked out the link and saw that Mark Wielgus of 45n5.com was a common friend. Debby’s with Market Leverage.

Note: This is a snippet from the 300+ photos I took at the seminar. More to come, including some commentary and analysis of the topics covered during the show.

Check out details on the next Affiliate Summit

Daron Babin’s (SE Guru) WebmasterRadio.fm is home to a ton of great content and I listen to many of the great shows there.

This week, Affiliate Thing, hosted by Revenue Editor-in-chief Lisa Picarille and Affliate Summit co-founder and affiliate marketing fixture Shawn Collins talked about the new podcast shows like:

• Jeff Doak and Sam Harrelson’s “Jeff and Sam Talk Tech, Marketing, Teh Internets and Stuff“
• Jim Kukral and Steve Rosenbaum’s “Video Ninjas“

and the new Shoemoney Show. (I guess Jeremy might have a little more time following the sale of AuctionAds to Media Whiz)

It was great to hear that Shawn listens to my Friday Podcast and mentioned it on the episode “The British Invasion: Affiliate Style” as well as on his blog entry “The Podcasts on my iPod“.

Besides checking out Affiliate Thing and the Shoemoney show, I also recommend new affiliate marketers to check out the “Affiliate Marketing Today” podcasts. Although the show is currently inactive, it’s worth checking out the archive for episodes hosted by Super Affiliate Jeremy Palmer. The 2004-2005 episodes hosted by ABestWeb founder Haiko de Poel are an excellent primer.

Although it might sound like I listen to many podcasts, I usually have a couple of gig on my hard disk and listen to it when I can.

I have a Nokia N73 Music Edition smart phone with about 2GB of memory on it, at the moment I’ve got John Carlton’s “Kickass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel” and Mike Litman/Matt Bacak’s “Ultimate Lifestyle Workshop” on it. The rest of the memory is taken up by video footage of my daughter, Bianca Wee.

Carsten Cumbrowski has podcast resources listed at his resource site Cumbrowski.com.

I just bought about $400 worth of used teleconferencing equipment off eBay (and had to pay about $30 in taxes when it got to Singapore), so you might hear more interesting Friday Podcasts in the near future.

In the meantime, if I had a wishlist of podcast shows, I would be interested in tuning in to the following:

• “The Super Affiliate Show” hosted by Jeremy Palmer and Amit Mehta.
• Pepperjam head honcho Kris Jones and his fiancee (and also Pepperjam Affiliate Marketing Director) Robyn Martin in the “Mr and Mrs Jones Affiliate Show” (they’re sure to blow the socks off the Brangelina “Mr and Mrs Smith” flick)
• “Blogging Strategies and Secrets” featuring SleepyBlogger and MyBlogLog community manager Robyn Tippins and the Blogga from Down Unda’ Yaro Starak.
• “SEO Gurus” with webmastworld denizens Todd “Stundubl” Malicoat and Michael “Graywolf” Gray
• “The 5Star – ShareResults” show with 5Star Affiliate president Linda Buquet and ShareResult’s tap dancer and affiliate manager Jamie Fortunaso

I realize that the last thing you’d want to do is see another “5 Podcasts I’d Like To See” meme spreading around (and I’m suffering from meme fatigue too).

Let’s restrict it to the comments and if you want to blog and trackback to here, I’ll help publicize your posts.

But what I’m most interested in is your opinion on the concepts I’ve proposed, maybe I’ll shoot Daron an email. Or if there’re shows you’d like to see (that’s not on WMR already), list it in the comments and more interestingly, why you’d think it’d work.

If you didn’t make it down, Shawn has posted a listing of WebProNews’ video coverage of the event.

Jim Kukral seems to have been holed up in the Blogging Room the entire event and has posted quite a bit of content. Pity I wasn’t down there, else I’d have visited him once or twice (For real this time, Jim…)

He did post this marvel of a pic though:

Missy Ward and Internet Girl Geek Stephanie [Let me emphasize that’s it’s SIMULATED]

Shawn has also blogged about ASE:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

5Star Affiliate Linda Buquet has linked to the Affiliate Summit East blog posts. [Incidentally I won 5Star’s “Blog Buzz” prize a week back. Thanks Linda!].

Shoemoney has posted his reflections on Affiliate Summit East and has a number of interesting photos in his photo gallery.

Super Affiliate Zac Johnson, who spoke at ASE, has posted his thoughts on the event on his blog. If you didn’t make it to the show, you might be interested in his ASE swag giveaway. [The monkey looks cute, Zac, and I see you have 3 of them…hint, hint]

I guess someone out there would be interested in the WickedFire shirt.

The next Affiliate Summit will be in the UK, and following that in Vegas next year!

You can check out Linda’s Affiliate Forum Blogging Contest and decide if you meet the criteria and take part in the contest.

I’d first heard Linda on the Shoemoney Net Income radio show.

If you missed it you can listen to the podcast here:

Download audio file (NI100306.mp3)

I remember Linda gave a few nuggests of affiliate marketing advice on the show.

Let’s look at contests for a moment.

Are they worth taking part in?

For experienced affiliates $400 will seem like chump change, but the big payout comes in the form of the intangibles that come with participation.

Let’s look at the spinoffs:

• Visibility: By virtue of participation, you’ll have visitors checking out your contest entry. If you have compelling content, great presentation or better yet a combination of both, you’ll stand head and shoulders above the competition. You’ll build a following, especially from those who haven’t been to your blog yet.
• Social Linkage: Contests, memes and writing projects lend themselves to leading to interaction, particularly among participants. If you don’t already know the big players in your industry, this is a good opportunity to build some bridges.
• Building Social Goodwill: Any community only survives as long as people are willing to help each other. If you are actively helping someone, or being helped, it pushes forward the vicious cycle of kindness. You’ll want this cycle to be as big as possible.

So take part in the contest?

The prize is always compelling, but the payout from participation could be much, much bigger.

If you’re planning to take part, good luck!

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