Commission Junction University – Day 1
I’m down here in lovely Santa Barbara for Commission Junction University, and day one is in the can. The weather has been nice…although living in California I’m generally used to this weather, but being in the Southern end of the state there’s a distinctly different feel that I can’t quite put my finger on. But I enjoy it.
I flew from Oakland to Los Angeles on a puddle jumper, and from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara on a pack of gum. Between flights and layovers and cab rides, I arrived at my motel at 12:15am. The room is your average motel fare: 70’s floral bedspread, translucent yellow cords on the lamps, inmate furniture. The room also has a mini fridge, microwave, nicely sized TV, free wifi, and a surprisingly comfortable bed & pillows – not too shabby for $77/night. This makes me glad I’m staying at a real hotel for Blog World Expo this coming weekend.
Because of the high cost of cab fare ($25+), once I got the conference hotel I didn’t want to leave until the end of the day. I ran into Lisa Picarille and Wade Tonkin almost immediately in passing after I registered and headed to the first session, which I’ll cover later. Jeremy Palmer from Quit Your Day Job lead the first “course” as CJU calls them, and Olivier Chaine from Magnify 360 led the second. On a personal note, I read his name in the program and knew the pronunciation would be something like “o-live-e-ay shayne” and was confused when the emcee pronounced it very phonetically (olive-er chain). I was disappointed in CJ when Olivier pronounced his own name at the end of his session much like I’d imagined it was properly pronounced…if you’re going to introduce someone, learn how to pronounce their name.
I digress. Both courses were informative and well done, and I’ll be posting a bullet point review of both later on. After the courses were done I took a quick break and then headed out to the CJU Expo, a small area of tables nicely held outside under umbrellas that more closely resembled the Meet Market at Affiliate Summit than your typical trade show. It was mostly merchants and different CJU programs with tables, with the exception of an OPM (Schaaf Consulting), a couple affiliates (SurfMyAds.com), and a table for the Performance Marketing Alliance.
It’s a good thing I saw that PMA table, because it made it easy to run into some familiar faces in the form of Connie Berg & Brad Waller. Also was able to say hello to Michael Brucker from RingCentral at their table, one of the organizers of the BAAMC whose quarterly meetings I attend. (By the way if you’re an affiliate manager with a company in the SF Bay area interested in getting involved and possibly hosting about 20-25 ppl for lunch some day, let Michael know).
After the expo it was zoo time with the welcoming event being held down the street at the Santa Barbara Zoo. As much as I wanted to go, my phone was practically dead for some reason and my stomach was a bit upset, so I opted to head back to my motel. Tomorrow is a day full of sessions that look pretty good, and a keynote from Guy Kawasaki…who I think may literally be giving me the nifty orange Alltop shirt off his back afterwards. More about that if/when it happens 😉
Online Marketing Glossary: Algorithm
Algorithm:
- A set of mathematical equations or rules that a search engine uses to rank the content contained within its index in response to a particular search query.
The algorithm is what powers search engines, and also provides websites with page ranks, Alexa rankings, Technorati authority, etc. The algorithm often takes into account inbound links, outbound links, where the inbounds are coming from, where the outbounds are going to, number, quality, etc.
____
Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Pay Per Sale
Pay Per Sale (PPS):
- A program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sale of a product or service that they refer to a merchant’s website. Pay-per-sale programs usually offer the highest commissions and the lowest conversion ration.
This is the most common model of affiliate program. The merchant puts the pressure of generating a sale on the affiliate, but in exchange will give that person a higher commission since it’s a guaranteed sale. Generally commissions I’ve seen range from 5% to 20%, with some exceptions of course. This model of program is the most beneficial for most merchants since they are paying exclusively for the most beneficial form of performance – the sale, which makes them the most money of course in any of the pay-per models.
____
Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Crawler
Crawler (also Spider, Robot or Bot):
- Component of a search engine that gathers listings by automatically trolling the Web and following links to webpages. It makes copies of the webpages found and stores them in the search engine’s index.
The faster the crawlers work, the faster the pages are indexed and show up in search engine results pages.
____
Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Pay Per Lead
Pay Per Lead (PPL):
- A program where an affiliate receives a commission for each lead that they generate for a merchant website such as completed surveys, contest or sweepstakes entries. Pay per lead generally offers midrange commissions and midrange-to-high conversion ratios.
Merchants typically use this model when they want to follow up with leads to complete the sale themselves. They take the pressure of conversions off of the affiliate and take it on themselves, usually with follow up via email campaigns or salespeople.
____
Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Pay Per Impression
Pay Per Impression (PPI):
- An advertising pricing model in which advertisers pay based on how many users were served their ads.
This isn’t used as often since there can be third party interference in counting impressions. I’ve been told that search engine crawlers can interfere with the impressions, although I’m honestly not sure how accurate that is.
If you know a program that uses PPI, share!
____
Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
