Affiliate Summit Wrap-Up: Day 2

The second and final day of the Affiliate Summit expo was slightly less busy than the first day of the event, as many participants had a very tight schedule and needed to return to their respective destinations, or perhaps, for some, just run for the hills from the enticing allure and over-the-top luxury that epitomizes Las Vegas. Although there was much affiliate marketing, networking business and deal-making taking place during the day, for AMWSO in particular, it was a pleasant opportunity to meet and greet in person a variety of colleagues, partners and potential collaboration opportunities, in a bit more relaxed atmosphere.

Some of the interesting and extremely influential people that AMWSO had the chance to meet and talk shop throughout the day included Brett Shearing, Business Development Manager for Commission Junction, who let me know that CJ is developing a Pay-Per-Call tracking technology, as well as Jennine Rexon, CEO and founder of the Rextopia network, Brendan J. Smith, CEO and founder of the Motive Interactive affiliate network, Gary Kamikawa, VP of Interactive marketing for Mpire and one of the fastest growing java-enabled ad networks Widget Bucks in addition to truly international participants such as Scott McCarthy, International Publisher Sales Manager for the largest U.K. affiliate network, TradeDoubler.

One of the most lively and spirited conferences taking place during the last day of the show was "ABW: loved or hated, but never ignored", featuring a panel of ABW moderators including Chuck Hamrick, OPM for Affiliate Crew, Deborah Loxly, OPM for Team Loxly, Michael Coley, founder of Amazing-Bargains, Ron, OPM of 7 Days A Week marketing and of course, Haiko de Poel, Jr., Administrator and CEO of AbestWeb. The key takeaway from this conference was that AbestWeb has become over the past 6 years, a trusted third party in the affiliate marketing industry that is open and honest as well as provides an ideal platform for any affiliate, to have a fair voice to communicate their trepidations. On the horizon for Abestweb, Haiko de Poel, Jr., announced a social marketing aspect that is in development for the 42,000-plus members, which features an expanded profile and ability to add friends, create groups and other affiliate business related functionality.

Affiliate Summit Update : Day 1

The first day of the Affiliate Summit expo welcomed thousands of affiliates, agencies, vendors, merchants and networks all converging at the Rio in Las Vegas for a jam-packed day of discussions, face-to-face meetings, and conferences. Some of the great benefits of the event for all those involved were:

Putting faces to emails: Being in the affiliate marketing industry, the majority of our communications with partners, merchants and networks is done via email and phone. In some cases, we have worked with partners and networks for several years, without ever meeting face to face. However, with the Affiliate Summit, AMWSO had an excellent opportunity to meet a variety of our long-standing partners and networks in person and put actual faces to the emails we contact virtually every week, such as Vinny Lingham CEO of Synthasite, Dan Foster, Account executive with Performics and Michael C. Jones, COO of Pepperjam Network.

Meeting new affiliates: A vital part of growing AMWSO programs is bringing new partners to our merchants and while many affiliates tend to be a quiet, rather secretive bunch, it was refreshing to have the chance at the Affiliate Summit venue to meet new affiliates in person in a wide range of verticals, who are looking to expand their revenue streams and bolster their commission incomes with the more than 35 merchants AMWSO manages.

Seeking new partnerships with CPA and up-and-coming affiliate networks: Another value from participating at Affiliate Summit is investigating new opportunities for AMWSO merchants that are not exclusive to their affiliate network, to reach out and expand their offering into the rapidly growing CPA and affiliate network space. Some of the interesting CPA and Affiliate networks at the event were Canadian Sponsors, an affiliate network focused on the Canada market and Revenue Loop, an affiliate network emphasizing transparency, and Affnet, a CPA network centered around financial and diet offers.

Regarding the conferences taking place at Affiliate Summit, one of the most exciting and interesting presentations was that of Will Reynolds, CEO of SEER, who talked about "How to Futureproof Your SEO Efforts". Here is a list of the helpful and mostly free tools that were recommended during the presentation:

SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool
Use this tool to start small and stay realistic in your SEO efforts.

MSN Ad Center Intelligence keyword research and optimization tool with Excel 2007 plug-in
Use this to create pivot tables and research popular terms with actual search volume numbers data and seamless integration with MS Excel 2007. (Note: the plug-in won't work on older versions of Excel such as Excel 2003)

Google Trends
While Google trends doesn't feature actual search and click volume numbers, it is a good start for identifying what people are looking for on SEs and what kind of content you can create to acquire new traffic sources.

Tube Mogul
One of the key advice from the presenation was to develop a "Digital Asset Inventory" such as videos. Use this tool to upload your video and distribute to many sites at once.

Yahoo Search Assist
This is a great tool on Yahoo results pages that include the terms and phrases you are looking for anywhere in the query. For example if you type in "Football" into Yahoo search assist, it will automatically suggest "Fantasy Football" because that is the most popular result clicked on for the term football.

Google Suggest
While not quite as intuitive as Yahoo Search Assist, because it orders suggestions based on the first keyword typed into the search box, it also can offer keyword directions for your SEO research.

Touchgraph - Google browser
Use this tool to see how your site is doing in relation to competitors on Google

Quantcast
Use this tool to identify keyword volume on brand names

Copernic Tracker
Although one of the only paid tools recommended, the price point of $49.95 is relatively reasonable considering it allows you to track changes in code on any competing website.

Affiliate Marketing: Outsourcing (OPMs) is More Cost Effective Than Hiring In-House

According to Shawn Collin's Affstat Report the average salary for an in-house manager is $50,000 a year and up. Now, factor in health and other benefits, desk space, infrastructure, those costs rise significantly. To support an in-house affiliate manager, a business must plan to spend at least $70,000 - $90,000 in overhead. If the in-house manager decides to leave the company, all of the knowledge and the relationship history usually walks out the door with the manager.

Additionally, it may be difficult to find an experienced affiliate manager within a specific geographical area. Some larger organizations leave the affiliate program in the care of a junior level marketing staffer. This can be a mistake with lasting consequences. A well run affiliate program can be responsible for 10-20% or more of overall company revenue. Likewise, with the advantages of added revenue and reach, there are dangers in not carefully managing an affiliate program. Brand messages may be damaged and revenue from other channels pillaged via malware and parasiteware.

Most OPM firms charge either a flat fee plus revenue share, or at least a monthly minimum revenue share. Generally the monthly minimum of flat fee is between $2000-$5000 a month.

Now also consider the other benefits an OPM brings: experience, relationships, knowledge, and stability. An OPM has established working relationships with many if not all of the top performing affiliates. They've built a history of performance, and generally an affiliate will know the style of any certain OPM such as does the OPM have a stance against parasiteware, or are they accessible?

In relation to the experience benefits, the cost savings strongly favor an advantage to outsourcing an affiliate program. Focus on the business, do what you do best, and leave the success and growth of a well-managed experience program to experts who are focused on growing your business.

ShareASale "Under the Stars" Party at Affiliate Summit

Here are some pictures and a clip from the awesome ShareASale "Under the Stars" party that took place on Sunday, February 24th at the 2-story Sky Villas on the top floors of the Palms Hotel "Fantasy Tower".


Mike Allen, super-affiliate of Shopping-Bargains


Brian Littleton, founder and CEO of ShareASale

Brian of ShareASale at the piano.

The PartnerMaker Party at Affiliate Summit

Here are some pictures from the PartnerMaker party co-sponsored by AMWSO that took place Saturday, February 23, 2008 at the Wine Cellar of the Rio Suites Hotel in Las Vegas.




James Martell of Affiliate Marketers Boot Camp





Kurt Lohse, founder and CEO of super-affiliate KeyCode and Jamie Birch of Converseon




David Delisle and Jeff Molander of The PartnerMaker

LinkShare China is go.

Well while everyone is raving about the new LinkShare Publisher Dashboard I decided to take a look around the rest of the site to see what had changed. Heading straight to the international section and then over to jobs, and low and behold what do we see jobs for LinkShare China in Shanghai. So it would appear the rumours were true and LinkShare is finally heading into China!

Not much else available that I can find on the China launch, the last time it seems to have been mentioned was back in early 2006 in an article in Revenue. Well it will be interested to see whether they launch with a focus on eCommerce or lead generation and what they have learnt from the the success and failures of the early network entries into the China market

Can you make BIG money in Affiliate Marketing?

Yes, you can! Paul from Uber Affiliate just put up a new site compiling some of the pictures and earnings from a few large affiliates over at S.eriously.com. Those checks and earnings reports can certainly be motivating (Granted there is some discussion and debate over how many are real and how many are...touched up). But either way, as a firm, AMWSO has issued some big checks over the past few years. Of course these aren't generally net earnings, as a lot of that traffic might have been paid for via paid search ads. So even though an affiliate gets a check for say $100,000, they might have to pay $99,000 to Google, Yahoo or MSN for search advertising. Then of course, there is this other tried and true method of "earning big money via onlne marketing" :)

However, who can argue with an extra $1000 in the pocket. Plus, there can be ancillary benefits. Imagine if you're paying for all of those search ads on a credit card that gives cash back, or rewards points. 99,000 rewards points can add up to some nice all paid vacations in a short amount of time, or cash back, or any other benefits offered by credit card companies.

How can you start earning some of these monster checks? It isn't easy, but it's attainable, however it does take effort and work to build sustainable protected earnings.

The first thing to do, is to decide what product and how you'll be promoting a product or program. Basically you can make a niche site that is content focused, or a more general type of site like a coupon site or reward site.

If you decide to go with a niche site, then you must decide on what that niche is. There are various recommended ways of deciding on a niche, some advise to start off doing keyword research. I would recommend to start writing down some topics that interest you. At least, while you're learning to be an elite affiliate marketer, you'll also be learning about a subject that inspires you. Find some affiliate programs centered around these niches, sign up, and ask the affiliate manager for a keyword list. Then do a bit of keyword research to see what kind of traffic the recommended keywords are getting. See if you can come up with your own long-tail keywords using the provided list as a base. I would do a review of keyword tools here, but I don't think I could be more comprehensive that this keyword tool review by Aaron Wall.

In another post here, we'll talk about what kind of costs you might incur when investing in a keyword tool, getting a web host, getting some design help, and promoting your site.

If looking for program ideas, sign up for one of the AMWSO programs and get some help from one of the AMWSO managers to get you on the fast track to receiving one of those monster checks!

Performance Marketing Support Group re-launches Monthly Teleconference for Internet Retailers and Marketing Professionals

Every 3rd Wednesday of the month, at 4:00pm Eastern Time, Allan Dick from Vintage Tub & Bath and Jeff Molander host a conference call to help e-marketing and e-commerce professionals find solutions to any issues or problems faced on a daily basis. Issues are discussed amongst peers, and advice will be offered from industry experts on the call.

This is a great opportunity to hear what your peers are facing, and listen to new insights on solutions to problems. The call on February 20th will center around the debate on how to balance paid search with affiliate marketing strategies. We at AMWSO are certainly keen to listen to the thoughts of other retailers and consultants on this very hot topic.

The monthly calls are a life blood for me. As the sole person charged with e-commerce marketing management at a mid-sized multi-channel retailer, I need a support group that speaks my language,

- Trish Tickle of Kitchen Collection.

Even after the call finishes, participants are invited to join a web based discussion group to network and continue helping one another. Trish continues:

Networking with other affiliate managers lets me find out about new ideas, explore and ask questions about things that I don t have time to research completely. Between calls we can email each other or the whole group about issues that can t wait until the next call. In fact, just yesterday we were discussing international affiliate marketing.

To sign up for the call, contact: Allan Dick at allan@vintagetub.com.

Valentines Day for Affiliates

Next to Christmas, Valentine's Day is one of the biggest shopping holidays of the year. Close to a billion dollars will be spent for Valentine's day, and affiliates are in an excellent position to grab a piece of the pie. Most of the shopping is done the week prior to the 14th of February, with another surge occurring just a couple days before the day as shoppers search for those last minute ideas and gifts.

The expected usual suspects: jewelry, flowers, chocolate and other gifts are the hottest items for the Valentine's Holiday.  Thankfully, most respective merchants have affiliate programs in all of these niches.  Men average over $100 spending for the holiday, with woman averaging just over $50. While it's true that many people are actually turned off by the commercialization of this day, 30% of people surveyed by the NPD Group appreciate the romance of the day, and 8% are pressured into making a purchase, "so they don't get into trouble."

Jewelry and the like will be the most promoted items, however do consider that women might also be making purchases for men. Also consider, once people are prompted into a "buying mood", anything might get purchased for anyone, including purchases for oneself!  According to Google checkout, 50% of people shopping for Valentine's Day make multiple purchases.  According to the National Retail Federation, 22.4 percent of men and 7.3 percent of women plan to purchase jewelry.

AMWSO runs several jewelry and fashion programs that are positioned well for the Valentine's holiday. We've set up a special Valentine's Day Affiliate Programs page to highlight the specials, deals and offers that are being promoted just for Valentine's Day.

This is really the last gift giving holiday until Mother's Day in the USA (although some people gift for Easter), so gear up, get those banners, links, promotions and coupons posted!