Heather Paulson’s one of the guests I’ve been looking forward to inviting on the Friday Podcast for some time and the 6 month wait has been worth it. Besides being a very technically competent marketer, Heather founded her own full service internet marketing agency, Paulson Management Group, which offers affiliate management, search engine optimization and pay per click management services among others.
Having racked up experience at affiliate management firm PartnerCentric, as well as serving as a contractor for Microsoft’s iSEM team, Heather also sits on the boards of the Affiliate Summit and Affiliate Classroom.
During our discussion, Heather talked about:
- Issues and considerations for merchants adding affiliate marketing as a new component to their marketing strategy
- Advantages and disadvantages of using an outsourced affiliate program agency compared to hiring an in-house affiliate manager
- How affiliate managers can enhance programs they manage with some best-of-breed industry practises
- Tips for better affiliate project management (from the affiliate and affiliate manager perspective)
- An insight into how super affiliates operate and key strategies and techniques they use
- How affiliates can get more out of working with their affiliate managers
- Resources for affiliate marketers and tips for growing and scaling your business
Check out the podcast below:
Links:
UPDATE: Check out the latest version of: The Black Ink Project
It takes a lot to get me out of bed early in the morning, but Jeremy Palmer’s Black Ink Project kicked off to a great start today.
Jeremy talked about his start in affiliate marketing and the niches he’s in (dating, web hosting, music downloads, VOIP, online marketing), as well as criteria for shortlisting and testing viable niches.
More importantly, he also talked about a number of niches he “failed” at and eventually dropped.
If you’re not already generating a 5-figure income from your affiliate marketing efforts, you ought to sign up for Jeremy’s 20 session, free (yes…it’s free) training at the Black Ink Project.
I’ll be presenting content later in the series, and as the program picks up steam, I know that more than a few Super Affiliates are going to come out of this program.
The first week of training kicked off at 3pm PDT and continues the rest of the week.
Check out the full schedule and register at: Black Ink Project (limited spaces available).
The call recordings may be available 24 hours after the initial session.
Also, find out more about Jeremy Palmer’s strategies from his appearance on a recent episode of the Friday Podcast.
Note: US and Canadian BlackInkProject members have a toll-free number to call in. I made a long distance call, but it’s great to find out that webinar provider WebEx (a Cisco company) is providing real-time audio stream too.
The tickets are booked, the bags aren’t packed, but one things for sure, I’m headed to Las Vegas at the end of this month for Anik Singal and Jeremy Palmer’s PPC Classroom Live!
Yes it’s going to be a 24+ hour flight, and it’s during the peak season where it was absolute murder to get my ticket.
But well worth it…
PPC Classroom Live is the live workshop component to Anik and Jeremy’s PPC Classroom product.
Here’s a taste of the Super Affiliate lineup:
(Left-to-right) Mark Widawer, Ros Gardner, Greg Cesar, Anik Singal, Amit Mehta, Jeremy Palmer, Kirt Christensen, David Bullock
Certainly worth flying all the way there for a couple of days (the event is on December 1-2 in Vegas).
For some affiliates who’re new to the industry and trying their luck, affiliate marketing can be a gamble…
Especially if you don’t have (more…)
As an affiliate marketer, I have to deal with challenges (or you might view them as opportunities) during the course of your campaigns, but when happens when you find out a merchant has been sticking it to you?
A case in point, I’d be promoting web services for a merchant through their in-house affiliate program. It paid about $60 per customer who signed up for their services.
And I discovered a couple of days ago that they’re running the same offer on one of the biggest affiliate networks and paying out $90 a customer.
Boy, I was fuming.
I can understand a $5-10 gap differential when the same offer is listed across various affiliate networks (the networks might be willing to cut out a chunk of their profits to give more to affiliates).
But when there’s a near 50% commission payout gap I feel it unconscionable.
There is an unspoken affiliate marketers’ code of conduct, but there isn’t a formal regulatory body which presides over affiliate networks and merchants.
In other words, who watches the watchmen?
Some might say that in a capitalist society, you are welcome to vote with your feet.
I tend to view business as a series of long term business relationships with real people.
I can only guess that:
- The various marketing/ad departments within the merchant or the network aren’t talking to each other, such that you have a 50% gap in affiliate payouts.
- The service provider faced some stiff competition and upped their payouts in real-time to remain competitive. But wouldn’t you be talking to your in-house team too?
- Affiliates? Who cares.
For the purpose of this post, I prefer not to name the merchant, nor the network, nor the type of service and focus on the core issue instead: Trust.
So does that mean affiliates are going to (more…)
