Wardrobe Sponsorship Deadline July 15th
I’ve decided in order to give me enough time to have the t-shirt and buttons printed, the deadline to sponsor my wardrobe for Affiliate Summit East 2008 will be July 15th.
Remember it’s just $15 for a 5″x2″ logo on the back of my shirt and $5 for a 2.5″ round button on my bag. If you’re interested, please contact me at blog@trishalyn.com with “Affiliate Summit Sponsorship” in the subject line.
Read MoreConfidence Doesn’t Replace Hard Work
Yesterday I went to the Alameda County Fair for our annual outing. My friends and I go mostly for the shows and rides, but it’s also intriguing to see the products being sold and the animals and prize winners. This year we chose yesterday to go because of the performer – comedian Paul Rodriguez.
Our motley crew are all fans of his acting & stand-up routines, so we were excited to see him live. Don’t get me wrong, we were not disappointed, but I noticed something about his hour long act last night that got me thinking about the lifespan of a person’s career, regardless of their profession.
If you’re as big a fan of stand-up comedy as I am, you’ll notice that many performers have carefully written & structured routines. Optimized sequence of jokes & topics for the best laughs, call backs to earlier bits, and clear thought progression. Most of what I’ve seen Paul Rodriguez do in the past isn’t any different. But last night he rambled a bit and couldn’t follow a train of thought, often going back to things he’d mentioned already 15 minutes later after being done with a random tangent. He had many off the cuff interactions with the crowd, which often distracted him from his topic. While all hilarious, this is definitely the sign of someone who’s confident and comfortable with their profession; they feel that having to “wing it” is no problem because they will still get the job done. Ultimately the crowd was laughing like crazy, so most people probably didn’t notice the disjointedness of it as much as I did. Overall it’s safe for anyone to say that his job was accomplished.
But the hard work just wasn’t there. To me that shows a slacking work ethic – to not give as great a performance at your job every time no matter what the circumstances. This transcends performance art and really extends to all careers. While it’s great to be advanced in your career and confident with your skills at what you do, putting your actions into cruise control can be dangerous. If you’re not working hard and being the best you can be at your job every day, it’s going to start to show. While one little mistake can be swept under the rug, a lot of little mistakes start making the rug bumpy and get noticed in a big, bad way. A lesson should be learned that confidence doesn’t replace hard work. Of course it’s great to be confident at your job because it will help your performance, but also recognize that it took a lot of hard work to get there and it will take a lot of hard work to stay there. You cannot rely on that confidence to just “get through it” – the effort and hard work ethic still has to be there driving you to perform at your peak.
I understand the psychology of winging it, especially under the circumstances. It is just a county fair and the show was free with the $10 price of admission, so he can’t be making much off of this gig. He’s also go bigger projects he’s working on at the moment – upcoming movies, a USO trip to Baghdad, and a trip to South Africa to name a couple he mentioned. So at a certain point, delegation of resources, time, and energy is necessary to get everything done. But that’s really no excuse to let anything slack enough to be as noticeably disorganized as last night’s show. There’s a fine balancing point to multi-tasking, which is not letting anything slack and getting everything done effectively and presenting the best product (in this case, his show) you can & always putting the best foot forward.
It’s hard to get to the top. But career minded people need to also remember that it’s equally as hard to stay there. Just look at Britney Spears 😉
Read MoreOnline Marketing Glossary: Email Marketing
Email Marketing:
- The promotion of products or services via electronic mail.
There are many services that can assist small businesses to send targeted emails to their customers at an affordable rate. I have the most experience with Vertical Response, which is really easy to send both custom emails and emails using their templates.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Escalating Commission
Escalating Commission (also see Sliding Scale):
- A compensation system based on an increase in the money paid to an affiliate. It is a percentage commission that increases based on the achievement of certain targets, such as specific number of copies sold.
This is a particularly attractive system for full time affiliates with greater resources to put into their marketing campaigns. They a paid a higher rate for their increased efforts above & beyond that of what a part time affiliate can achieve.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Loyalty Affiliates
Loyalty Affiliates:
- Affiliates who offer incentives to their members with cash back or other benefits and rewards to shop through their website. Often they own cash back shopping websites.
Some popular and well known examples of loyalty affiliate sites are Upromise.com and Ebates. These sites give the user points for rewards as well as cash back, encouraging them to shop through their affiliate links. Many sites are able to finance the rewards for users based directly from the commissions they receive on the sales and leads.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Cribbed Content for June 27th
Surprisingly enough, this week is flying by for me. It seems like a slow summer week, but at the same time I’ve been awfully busy with some new projects at work and some thoughts circling in my head about a new website I may tackle soon. The idea is all there, but I have to flesh it out and, really, decide if I have time to do it! Here are your links for this week – the word around the campfire in online business.
- Once again, the affiliate marketing industry attacked as douchebags. And by people who call themselves professionals, no less. Shawn Collins did all the lashing out necessary in his blog Consultants Can Fix Affiliate Marketing.
- Congratulations to Lisa Picarille & Revenue Magazine for winning the Performance Marketing’s Most Vocal Advocate Golden Link award at this week’s Linkshare Symposium. It was worth is for her to be able to say “Sorry, Jangro”. If you don’t get the reference, go to www.SorryJangro.com
- Just yesterday on the heels of Google partnering with Yahoo and more talk of a potential Microsoft bid on the company, Yahoo officially announced their reorganization plans. In laymens terms, they’re taking some time to get their shit together 🙂
- More confusion is being perpetrated about the PMA by Shoemoney. Try doing some research next time before declaring something is a scam with shady intentions. Affiliate Classroom is NOT running it, they’re just providing a website and vehicle for it. Other companies are providing resources as well.
