In his new role as Affiliate Development Manager, Jason will be recruiting established affiliates into the network and helping them integrate affiliate programs from SAS merchants.

Jason also talked about:

• His intiatives to ramp up the affiliate education elements and a tutorial system he’s working on
• Enhancements to the SAS merchant’s product datafeeds
• Availability of new business models, such as Pay-Per-Call
• Updates on SAS’ Think Tank invite-only workshop
• FTP download capability for merchant coupons

Check out the podcast below:

Links:

• Jason on Twitter
• ShareASale News on Twitter
• ShareASale
• ShareASale Charity Stars

Jason’s IM details:
AIM: jasonrubacky
MSN: jasonrubacky[at]hotmail.com
yahoo: JasonRubacky

As an affiliate marketing veteran, he’s been in the business since 1989 and has learned a lot along the way, mostly through trial and error, to the point of owning his flagship site: The Mail Order Shoppe and several successful niche affiliate sites.

Coupled with a quick wit and ready smile, BillyKay’s one of the friendliest personalities in the industry and a quick business mind to boot (plus some skill at video poker).

So even though we’d bumped into each other at the Affiliate Summit, I’d been looking forward to having a chance with him to discover:

• How he first got involved in affiliate marketing
• How he researches and develops unique angles to market his products
• Incorporating the concept of scarcity and urgency in his affiliate promotions
• His experience as a merchant and examples of successful affiliates promoting his programs
• Tips for successful networking and build your affiliate expertise
• Search engine optimization and keyword strategies
• And a whole lot more!

Check out the podcast below:

Links:

• BillyKay on twitter
• The Mail Order Shoppe
• Engraved Crystal Shoppe
• Custom Signs and Plaques

Note: The Engraved Crystal Shoppe and Custom Signs and Plaques have affiliate programs listed in the ShareASale affiliate network.

During the Friday Podcast, we touched on:

• Jason’s experience as an affiliate and affiliate manager
• How Football Fanatics got started and it’s position as a leader in the sport affiliate marketing field
• Information on the Football Fanatics affiliate program and it’s listing on Commission Junction, ShareASale and it’s in-house program
• Upcoming enhancements to it’s partner manager (affiliate) interface
• In addition to football, you can also promote hockey, surfing, NASCAR and MMA (mixed martial arts) products
• How to effectively generate traffic for your sports affiliate site
• Pro teams vs College teams: which drive more traffic, and importantly, have greater profit potential

We covered quite a bit of ground during the interview, check out the podcast below:

Links:

Jason Rubacky on twitter

Football Fanatics

Surf Fanatics

Jason’s blog

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.

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).

–

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).

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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.

• How merchants can use affiliate marketing as a sales channel for their products and services
• How to conduct due diligence when deciding whether to set up and operate their affiliate program or list it on an affiliate network
• How merchants can enhance their “affiliate relationship management” skills
• ShareASale’s “best practises” initiatives (possibly for merchants and affiliates – something I’m looking forward to checking out).

Check out: ShareASale

Access the podcast below:

Uncensored and via “fake live satellite” (to quote some Jim Kukral Daily Flip parlance, we present spy video and spy pics from the hallways of the Rio.

Note: Please note that these acts are performed by pure amateurs who did not undergo any professional training. Please do not try this at home, or anywhere near beloved household pets…

The Shawn Collins video montage with obligatory pounding bass dance track back:

More photos and videos…

Revving up the Segway’s gyroscope while celebrity pit engineer John “Evil Blogger” Chow looks on.

Amit Mehta tears up the carpet in his Brian Littleton Sweatervest(TM) race attire

John Chow prepares to do his high speed wheelie into a crowd of Affiliate Summit participants. Shawn Collins revised the number of attendees from 2,500 to 2,450 attendees shortly after. A new Guiness record for most number of ambulances at an Affiliate Summit is set.

Schaaf Consulting‘s Brook Schaaf practises his “Drive-By Blessing” technique. ASW attendees report seeing the “monetization light” shortly after.

ASW attendees gasp at the life-like nature of the Madam Tussaud’s wax scale replica of Shawn Collins. The figure will also be displayed at Affiliate Summit East in Boston, MA, August 10-12, 2008.

Here’s a video Joel Comm captured of my time on the Segway.

Also check out Joel’s latest project: TextCastLive.

For more goodness, check out:
Shawn’s post about the Segway at the Affiliate Summit